This is a complete list of country names in Chinese with audio pronunciation. At the top of the list I have listed common English speaking countries plus China for easy reference. I also provide a quick explanation as to Chinese country names are created in Chinese, as if you don’t understand how to read Chinese the characters are almost certainly meaningless.
Pronunciation of the names in the list of countries below uses the official Chinese character Romanisation known as Pinyin, however even if you don’t know Pinyin you should be able to make some sense of how the characters are pronounced.
Chinese names for countries typically partially or fully match the pronunciation of that countries name, that is to say Chinese characters are selected that are phonetically similar. Some countries end in the guó (国) character, meaning “country”, but most are a pure phonetic match. I’ll break this down in a bit more detail.
The majority of country names are written with Chinese characters which phonetically match the name of that country. If you look at the list of popular English speaking countries below, you will see this is quite obvious with names such as “àiěrlán” for Ireland and “àodàlìyà” for Australia. The translation of the characters that make up these country names typically carry no real meaning, although there characters are definitely not offensive and are positive where possible.
Some countries names in Chinese are only partially phonetically matched and instead have the “guó” character 国, which means “country”. Typically the character that precedes 国 is phonetically similar to at least part of the countries name, while also carrying a favourable meaning. Examples of this include America or Germany which are pronounced as měiguó (美国) and déguó (德国) respectively. In the case of America, “měi” has as similar sound to “America” and the 美 character means “beautiful”, so effectively the translation has the meaning of “beautiful country”. In the case of Germany, “dé” sounds similar to Deutschland, which lets not forget is the German language name for Germany; the 德 character translates to virtue, morality or ethics, which is again a nice compliment.
Finally, there are countries whose names are not written to phonetically match their name such as India, which is written as yìndù such that it sounds a like “Hindu”, the majority religion in India.
How to say which country you are from
我是。。。人 ( wǒ shì … rén ) is the way to say which country you are from, so for example to say “I am American” you would say 我是美国人 (wǒ shì měiguó rén); here 美国人 (měiguó rén) means American, which is just the word for America 美国(měiguó) with the word for “person”人 (rén) appended to the end.
To expand on this, to turn a country name into a nationality in Chinese you simply add 人 (rén) after the Chinese name of the country; here are some examples:
China 中国 (zhōngguó) becomes Chinese 中国人 (zhōngguó rén)
America 美国 (měiguó) becomes American 美国人 (měiguó rén)
Canada 加拿大 (jiānádà) becomes Canadian 加拿大人 ( jiānádà rén)
Australia 澳洲 (àozhōu) becomes Australian 澳洲人 (àozhōu)
Indian 印度 (yìndù) becomes Indian 印度人 (yìndù rén)
Britain 英国 (yīngguó) becomes British 英国人 yīngguó rén )
Note that someone saying they are Chinese 美国人 (měiguó rén) refers to their nationality, not ethnicity. Someone who is ethnically Chinese but is not a citizen of China is called a 华人 (huárén).
Popular English Speaking Countries
Below is a list of English speaking countries with their Chinese names:
English
Chinese
Pronunciation (Pinyin)
Australia
澳大利亚
àodàlìyà
Canada
加拿大
jiānádà
Europe
欧洲
ōuzhōu
Fiji
斐济
fěijì
India
印度
yìndù
Ireland
爱尔兰
àiěrlán
Malaysia
马来西亚
mǎláixīyà
New Zealand
新西兰
xīnxīlán
Pakistan
巴基斯坦
bājīsītǎn
Singapore
新加坡
xīnjiāpō
United Kingdom
英国
yīngguó
United States of America (USA)
美国
měiguó
Alphabetical list of country names in Chinese
Below is a complete list of all Chinese country names, broken down alphabetically.
