乔纳

The male name Jonah is rendered in Chinese as 乔纳. These characters are chosen for their sound, not their meaning — together they approximate how Jonah is pronounced. In pinyin (the standard romanization of Mandarin) this reads Qiáo nà.

Character-by-character breakdown

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

Origin & meaning of Jonah

Jonah is a name of Hebrew origin. From the Hebrew Yonah, "dove" — the prophet swallowed by a great fish who preached repentance at Nineveh.