玛蒂尔达

The female name Matilda is rendered in Chinese as 玛蒂尔达. These characters are chosen for their sound, not their meaning — together they approximate how Matilda is pronounced. In pinyin (the standard romanization of Mandarin) this reads Mǎ dì ěr dá.

Character-by-character breakdown

In Chinese, Matilda is written with 4 characters, each standing for one syllable of the sound: 玛 (Mǎ), 蒂 (dì), 尔 (ěr), 达 (dá). Each character here is a phonetic unit — picked for how it sounds, not for what it means — so read together they echo Matilda rather than spelling out a literal meaning.

Origin & meaning of Matilda

Matilda is a name of Germanic origin. From the Germanic maht (strength) and hild (battle): "mighty in battle."