艾里斯

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

Character-by-character breakdown

In Chinese, Iris is written with 3 characters, each standing for one syllable of the sound: 艾 (Ài), 里 (lǐ), 斯 (sī). Each character here is a phonetic unit — picked for how it sounds, not for what it means — so read together they echo Iris rather than spelling out a literal meaning.

Origin & meaning of Iris

Iris is a name of Greek origin. From the Greek iris, "rainbow" — the Greek goddess of the rainbow.