雪莉

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

Character-by-character breakdown

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

Origin & meaning of Shirley

Shirley is a name of English origin. From an English place name meaning "bright clearing."