How are biblical names written in Chinese?

By transliteration: characters are chosen to approximate the sound of the Hebrew or Greek name, so 大卫 is Dàwèi (David) and 摩西 is Móxī (Moses).

No — it is an approximation from dictionary glosses, described above. The exact figures on this site are the character and word counts, which are computed directly from the text.

Can I learn the names as a set?

The site's dictionary section covers the major people and places with their Chinese forms, pinyin and key passages.

About 1,300 Proper Names in the Bible

Answering: “how many names in the Bible Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON

This is an estimate, and the method is worth stating plainly: a word counts as a proper name if it has no HSK level and its CC-CEDICT gloss contains a capitalised English word. That catches 耶和华, 以色列 and 摩西, and it will miscount a handful of edge cases in both directions. It is not a hand-curated onomasticon.

Names are the single biggest obstacle for a learner reading Scripture in Chinese, because transliteration removes the usual help: the characters of 耶路撒冷 (Jerusalem) say nothing about the place, only how to say it. They are also why the genealogical books score worst on every difficulty measure here — Nahum sits last of 66 at 51.2% HSK 1-3.

The good news is that names are few and repetitive. 耶和华 alone accounts for 6,960 occurrences across 37 books, and 耶稣 for 1,492 — so a front-loaded list of a few dozen names carries an entire reading.

The most frequent names and name-like words

Word	Occurrences	Verses	Books
耶和华 (yē hé huá)	6,960	5,904	37 of 66
耶稣 (yē sū)	1,492	1,388	23 of 66
基督 (jī dū)	426	388	23 of 66
圣灵 (shèng líng)	207	190	26 of 66
安息日 (ān xī rì)	149	132	21 of 66
教会 (jiào huì)	111	104	16 of 66

Questions

How are biblical names written in Chinese?: By transliteration: characters are chosen to approximate the sound of the Hebrew or Greek name, so 大卫 is Dàwèi (David) and 摩西 is Móxī (Moses).
Is the count exact?: No — it is an approximation from dictionary glosses, described above. The exact figures on this site are the character and word counts, which are computed directly from the text.
Can I learn the names as a set?: The site's dictionary section covers the major people and places with their Chinese forms, pinyin and key passages.

Related reference pages

Take it further

97 ready-made vocabulary decks — by HSK level, by book or by topic, exportable to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.
Printable 田字格 worksheets — passages with pinyin, meanings and tracing rows.
The parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side, every word tappable.
The dataset behind these numbers — plain JSON, free to reuse with attribution.

How these numbers were produced

Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain — 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,021 verses.
Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation). A different segmenter gives slightly different word counts; character counts are unaffected.
HSK levels: HSK 3.0 levels from the complete-hsk-vocabulary list; band 7 covers HSK 7-9.
Reading times: 260 characters a minute — an assumption about a fluent adult reader, not a measurement.
Computed: 2026-09-26, from the text on this site.

These are counts anyone can reproduce from the published dataset. They are not a peer-reviewed linguistic study, and the difficulty rankings are one stated formula rather than a validated readability score.

Definitions: CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). If you share this file onward, keep this notice and share alike. Character data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License / LGPL).