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Are there "standard" transliterations for common western given names?

From looking up famous people, it seemsthat "Henry" is consistently 亨利 but "Alvin" could be 阿爾文, 艾爾文, or 艾文.

If I look up "John Wesley," I see 衛斯理 but my Chinese sister (adopted) told me 伟⁠思⁠礼 is better for my given name.  She came to us from 广州 at age eighteen, but I think she was originally from way northeast.  So she may have been influenced by Cantonese.

When my father taught English in 广州, they gave him a signature stamp with the surname in hanzi but kept "R." for "Richard."

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  • Please be aware of orthographic differences when you're trying to search for names (or really, any other vocabulary item). Your given name is rendered as 「偉思禮」; 「伟⁠思⁠礼」 is Simplified Chinese, which you should avoid using because it will cause a lot of issues when trying to match characters to anything written outside of the current PRC's directly administered areas (Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam), or even within the PRC pre-1956. Commented 7 hours ago
  • Recently in thread here, someone in Taiwan noticed r or R in billboard advertisements, which were otherwise entirely in Chinese characters. 水巷孑蠻, a veteran Sinologist here informed us: this is a thing in Taiwan, the R indicates Mr! Perhaps your Dad's R just means 先生！ Commented 5 hours ago
  • There's also a temporal aspect to the question. A standard, set, transliteration from years ago may not be the same one that is accepted currently. Commented 5 hours ago
  • @Pedroski. I don't think so. Actually, they used both of his first two initials: R.J.. You can see what the seal looked like at chinese.stackexchange.com/q/58918/15442 Commented 3 hours ago

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Maybe you can take a look at 英语姓名译名手册, e.g., this old version and this recent version. As the comments have pointed out, be aware that this may not be a good enough standard depending on the context.

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