Chinese name transliteration is described. A Chinese name including a surname followed by a given name is received. The received Chinese name is parsed into a surname and a given name by: identifying any dual-character surnames in the received Chinese name, by referencing a list of known Chinese surnames; identifying any single-character surnames in the received Chinese name, by referencing the list of known Chinese surnames; and identifying, among the remaining characters in the received Chinese name, any characters not belonging to a dual-character or a single-character surname as a given name. The identified surname and the identified given name are transliterated into a Mandarin Pinyin representation. The Mandarin Pinyin representation of the surname and the given name is normalized into a pre-determined representation.