艾琳

The female name Irene is rendered in Chinese as 艾琳. These characters are chosen for their sound, not their meaning — together they approximate how Irene is pronounced. In pinyin (the standard romanization of Mandarin) this reads Ài lín.

Character-by-character breakdown

In Chinese, Irene is written with 2 characters, each standing for one syllable of the sound: 艾 (Ài), 琳 (lín). Each character here is a phonetic unit — picked for how it sounds, not for what it means — so read together they echo Irene rather than spelling out a literal meaning.

Origin & meaning of Irene

Irene is a name of Greek origin. From the Greek Eirene, "peace" — the Greek goddess of peace and the season of spring.