Hanyu Pinyin Converter: Chinese Characters and Names to Pinyin
Characters with more than one reading (多音字), such as 行 in 银行 (háng) and 行走 (xíng), are read from the words around them. Check names and rare words: a single character on its own gets its most common reading.
Hanyu Pinyin
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How this works
Hanyu Pinyin is the standard romanisation of Mandarin, taught in Singapore schools. Each character is one syllable, and a tone mark shows its pitch: first (ā, level), second (á, rising), third (ǎ, dipping), fourth (à, falling), or no mark for the neutral tone. Tone numbers write the same tones as digits (ma1 to ma4).
The converter reads simplified and traditional characters with the open-source pinyin-pro dictionary and picks the reading of characters with more than one pronunciation from the surrounding word, so 银行 is yín háng but 行走 is xíng zǒu.
In name mode, the surname comes first and uses its surname reading (曾 is Zeng, not Ceng; 单 is Shan), two-character surnames such as 欧阳 are kept together, and each syllable of the given name is capitalised and spaced, as on Singapore documents: 陈伟明 becomes Chen Wei Ming. A Singapore name is often in a dialect romanisation such as Tan, Lim or Ng, and parents can add an optional Hanyu Pinyin name in brackets, which must come with the matching Chinese characters: ICA's example is Isaac Tan (Chen Xiao Ming) 陈小明. About 13% of Singapore citizens had a Hanyu Pinyin name registered as of February 2026.
FAQs
How do I write my Chinese name in Hanyu Pinyin?
Surname first, then the given name, with no tone marks: 陈伟明 is Chen Wei Ming in the common Singapore style, or Chen Weiming in the China style, where the given name is one word.
Why is my surname Tan and not Chen?
Because it was registered in a dialect romanisation. 陈 is Chen in Hanyu Pinyin but is usually spelled Tan from Hokkien or Teochew, or Chan from Cantonese. Dialect surnames are often combined with a Hanyu Pinyin given name, as in Tan Wei Ming.
What are the four tones in pinyin?
First tone ā is high and level, second tone á rises, third tone ǎ dips then rises, and fourth tone à falls sharply. A syllable with no mark is the neutral tone, as in the second 妈 of 妈妈 (mā ma).
How do I type ü without the special character?
Most keyboards and forms use v or u in place of ü, so 吕 (lǚ) is typed lv or written Lu. After j, q, x and y, ü is always written as u, as in ju and xue.