AVON (雅芳)，Avene (雅漾)，Yanor（雅娜), what differences do these cosmetic brands sound to you? Which one sounds more beautiful? 

For every company or product which needs a proper Chinese name, it is always a question whether the Chinese name should be phonetically adapted or not. As the data show, nearly 90% of companies would choose to convert their English names phonetically. Then the next question, to which few people would give a clear answer, is how the new Chinese name sounds like. A subtle question it is, Labbrand is going to find some phonological truth behind brand names: 

Before we start, let's learn some knowledge about Chinese. Chinese is a tonal language. Tones is an important part of Chinese, which are the variation of pitch within a syllable. There are basically four tones and one neutral tone in Mandarin Chinese which are used to distinguish different Chinese characters that have the same Pinyin. 

If you listen carefully, you will find Chinese is a very beautiful language as it has more musical sounds (vowels) than noise (consonants). Except for nasal sound like "n", "ng" and "r" all Chinese syllables end with vowels. So we call them "Final Sounds". The consonants at the beginning of a syllable are called "Initial Sounds". 

According to Chinese conventional concept, a good Chinese name in sound should be easy to articulate aloud and rhythmical between syllables. Thus, the identical tones or identical initial/final sounds should be avoided when a name is given. Let’s just take a close look at three cosmetic brand names: 

AVON(雅芳: yă fāng, elegant and fragrant) 
Avène(雅漾: yă yàng, elegant, ripple) 
Yanor(雅娜: yă nà, elegant, girls’ name) 

These Chinese names and their pinyin are so similar that we can hardly find the tiny differences between them. But if you carefully compare their pronunciation by pinyin, the distinction is self-evident. For Avène(雅漾: yă yàng), the two Chinese characters of this name are identical in the initial sound(indicated in red), and Yanor(雅娜: yă nà) identical in the final sound, these two names are not as articulating as AVON(雅芳: yă fāng). In addition, as the tones of AVON(雅芳: yă fāng) are 3rd tone and 1st tone respectively, the enunciation of “雅芳” is very melodious. 

To further illustrate the diversity of tones let’s see more examples: 
KOSE (高丝: gāo sī) and Clinique (倩碧: qiàn bì) Each of these two brand names are made of two Chinese characters that have the same tones (indicated in blue), which makes the two names sound monotonous and weak in rhythm. 
Lancôme(兰蔻: lán kòu) and Estee lauder(雅诗兰黛: yă shī lán dài) Quite contrarily, with the totally different tones of the characters, the above two names are euphonious with fluctuation of pitch. Estee lauder(雅诗兰黛: yă shī lán dài), in particular, contains all of four Chinese tones. A long name it is though, it sounds quite beautiful and is easy to remember.
 

Of course, as the French saying goes “Il y a toujours une exception pour confirmer la règle.” Such brand names as VS (沙宣:shā xuān), Lafang (拉芳：lā fāng), despite that the characters have the same tones, they still have nice sounds. The main reason is that the two names end with long vowels, which makes them sound more balanced. In the world of brands, it is easy to find one or two lovely Chinese characters in the brand names, but it is difficult to create a Chinese name containing several characters to sound beautiful as a whole. How many of us really notice the intonation and sounds of brand names? Now you may ask yourself the question: does my name sound beautiful? The following chart illustrates the four basic tones. 
 
Tones Tone Marks Descriptons Examples 

* 1st tone 阴平 high level dā 搭(join) 
* 2nd tone 阳平 high rising dá 答(answer) 
* 3rd tone 上声 low dipping dǎ 打(hit) 
* 4th tone 去声 high falling dà 大(big)