乔纳森

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

Character-by-character breakdown

In Chinese, Jonathan is written with 3 characters, each standing for one syllable of the sound: 乔 (Qiáo), 纳 (nà), 森 (sēn). Each character here is a phonetic unit — picked for how it sounds, not for what it means — so read together they echo Jonathan rather than spelling out a literal meaning.

Origin & meaning of Jonathan

Jonathan is a name of Hebrew origin. From the Hebrew Yonatan, meaning "God has given."