Lore / Language
How to pronounce
Zhong Kui
Two syllables, two tones, and a spelling that changes depending on which century transliterated it.
Quick answer
How do you pronounce Zhong Kui?
In Mandarin the name is Zhōng Kuí — roughly jong kway to an English ear, with the first syllable level and the second rising.Wikipedia The written name is 鍾馗 in traditional characters and 钟馗 in simplified.Wikipedia
Both English syllables are approximations. Mandarin zh- and the vowel in -ui have no exact English equivalents, and the tones carry meaning that English stress patterns do not.
The written name
Zhong Kui in Chinese
The name is written with two characters. In traditional orthography it is 鍾馗; in the simplified system used in mainland China it is 钟馗.Wikipedia Only the first character differs between the two systems — 鍾 simplifies to 钟, while 馗 is unchanged.
Game Science writes the game's Chinese title as 《黑神话：钟馗》, using the simplified form.Game Science That is a first-party spelling of the name, and it is the reason the simplified characters appear on the studio's own pages while museum catalogues of the historical figure more often use the traditional 鍾馗.Philadelphia Museum of Art
Neither form is more correct than the other. They are the same name in two writing conventions, in the same way that a personal name can appear in two spelling systems without becoming two names.
What the characters are doing
鍾馗 is a personal name, not a descriptive phrase, and it should be read as one. Character-by-character glosses of Chinese names frequently produce meanings the name never carried — a risk covered in the meaning section below.
Why the archive records this
Spelling drives search, not accuracy.
Readers arrive having seen the name written five different ways. Recording the variants in one place is more useful than treating any single English spelling as the correct one.
Romanisation is a convention. The Chinese characters are the stable record.
Saying it aloud
Pinyin pronunciation
Hanyu Pinyin is the standard romanisation system for Standard Mandarin, adopted internationally as ISO 7098.Wikipedia It writes the name as Zhōng Kuí, and the diacritics above the vowels are not decoration — they are the tones.Wikipedia
Zhōng — first tone
The macron (ˉ) marks the first tone: high and level, held steady rather than rising or falling. The initial zh- is a retroflex sound made with the tongue curled back toward the roof of the mouth. It is closer to the j in jog than to the z in zone, which is why English speakers reading the letters literally as "zong" land some distance from the Mandarin sound.
Kuí — second tone
The acute accent (ˊ) marks the second tone: rising, in the shape an English speaker uses for a question. The -ui ending is a glide, conventionally described in pinyin as a shortened -uei, which is why the syllable sounds nearer to kway than to koo-ee.
Putting the two together
Level on the first syllable, rising on the second: ZHŌNG–kuí. An English approximation of jong kway will be understood by most listeners, and it is an approximation rather than a transcription.
This archive does not host pronunciation audio and does not publish a phonetic transcription of its own. The descriptions above characterise the pinyin spelling and its tones as documented; for a recorded native pronunciation, a Mandarin dictionary with audio is the appropriate reference.
Spelling variants
Common English spellings
The same name reaches English through several routes: modern pinyin, the older Wade–Giles system, and simple misreadings that have become common enough to be worth listing. All of the following refer to the same figure.
Zhong Kui
Standard pinyin, tone marks omitted. This is the spelling used across this archive, by Game Science's English-language coverage, and by most museum catalogues.Philadelphia Museum of ArtThe Met Dropping the tone marks is normal practice in English prose and loses tone information without changing the identification.
Zhongkui
Pinyin, written as one word. A formatting choice rather than a different romanisation. Chinese given names are frequently closed up into a single word in English text, and search engines treat the two forms as near-equivalent. The archive uses the spaced form for readability.
Chung Kuei
Wade–Giles. The romanisation system in common English use before pinyin, which renders the name Chung¹ K'uei².Wikipedia It appears in older scholarship, mid-century art history and library catalogues. Encountering it does not indicate a different figure or a variant legend — only an earlier transliteration convention.
Zhong Qui
A misspelling. This is a transposition of Kui, not a recognised romanisation. In pinyin, q- represents a distinct consonant from k-, so qui is not an alternate way of writing the same syllable. The form circulates widely enough to be worth naming as an error.
Zong Kui
A misspelling. Dropping the h changes pinyin zh- to z-, which is a different initial consonant rather than a spelling variant of it. Like Zhong Qui, this appears often in circulation but is not a system-recognised form of the name.
Two of these five are conventions and two are errors, with Zhongkui sitting in between as a formatting choice. The archive standardises on Zhong Kui throughout and does not maintain separate pages for the variants, because they are spellings of one name rather than distinct subjects.
Meaning
What does Zhong Kui mean?
鍾馗 is a personal name. It identifies a specific figure in Chinese folklore — catalogued by the Philadelphia Museum of Art as "the fearless captor of ghosts and evil spirits" — rather than functioning as a title or a descriptive compound.Philadelphia Museum of Art
Attempts to translate the two characters separately and combine the results tend to produce phrases the name does not carry. Chinese personal names are frequently opaque in exactly this way: the characters were chosen for a person, and the name's significance comes from who bore it and what the tradition attached to him, not from a literal reading of its parts.
What the name reliably denotes is the demon-queller of the folkloric record: a figure associated with exorcising ghosts and protecting households, whose image is displayed at Lunar New Year to drive away malevolent forces.Philadelphia Museum of Art The mythology deep-dive traces that record from Tang-dynasty accounts through Song-dynasty texts and into the visual tradition; the short entity answer covers the same ground in a paragraph.
Whether the game's playable character is this figure is a separate question, and an open one. Game Science has not named its protagonist or stated a relationship to the folkloric Zhong Kui.Game Science The protagonist page tracks that question against the evidence rather than assuming the title settles it.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How do you pronounce Zhong Kui in English?
The usual English approximation is jong kway. It is a rough equivalent rather than an accurate transcription: Mandarin zh- is a retroflex consonant with no direct English counterpart, and English does not carry the two tones.
What is Zhong Kui in Chinese characters?
鍾馗 in traditional characters, 钟馗 in simplified.Wikipedia Game Science uses the simplified form in the game's Chinese title, 《黑神话：钟馗》.Game Science
What are the tones in Zhōng Kuí?
First tone on Zhōng — high and level — and second tone on Kuí — rising.Wikipedia The tone marks are part of the pinyin spelling, not optional accents.
Is "Chung Kuei" the same name?
Yes. It is the Wade–Giles romanisation of the same characters, used in English before pinyin became standard.Wikipedia It appears mainly in older scholarship and library catalogues.
Is it spelled "Zhong Qui" or "Zong Kui"?
Neither. Both are misspellings rather than alternate systems — q- and k- are different consonants in pinyin, as are z- and zh-. The standard spelling is Zhong Kui.
Should I write "Zhong Kui" or "Zhongkui"?
Both are acceptable. The spaced form is more common in English prose and is used throughout this archive; the closed form is a formatting convention for the same pinyin.
Scope
Language, not game canon.
Everything on this page describes how a name is written and said. None of it describes Black Myth: Zhong Kui's story, characters or protagonist, and none of it should be read as evidence about them.
The name is documented. The game's use of it is not.
Sources
Where this page comes from.
- Zhong Kui Reference
“鍾馗 / 钟馗”
English translation “Zhong Kui — traditional and simplified character forms of the name.”
Used for the written name and its romanisations only. Tertiary source: treated as Reported, never as Official.
- Pinyin Reference
“The International Organization for Standardization propagated Hanyu Pinyin as ISO 7098 in 1982.”
Used for the status of Hanyu Pinyin as the standard romanisation system. Tertiary source: treated as Reported, never as Official.
- 《黑神话：钟馗》 — official game page Official
“PC+主流主机平台，正式信息请以发售前通知为准。”
English translation “PC and mainstream console platforms; official information is subject to the pre-release announcement.”
Chinese-language page, rendered client-side. Its 常见问题 (FAQ) tab is the first-party record for the platform line — “PC and mainstream console platforms, official information subject to the pre-release announcement”. No specific console, storefront or date appears anywhere on it.
- Zhong Kui the Demon Queller (after 1624) Reference
“he subjugated two demons for Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty (618–906)”
Object 41623, after 1624. Calls him the fearless captor of ghosts and evil spirits, known in China and Japan. Supernatural stories appear in the Song dynasty (960–1279), including the Xuanzong episode. Portraits are hung at Lunar New Year to help expel evil spirits. The same entry describes this painting as a stout, boorish-looking warrior in official ceremonial attire, with a stack of books and a stringed instrument, and says that as the legend relates he once achieved top rank in the civil service examination.
“Handscroll; ink on silk”
Accession 1990.134. Catalogue record retrieved from the museum’s open-access collection API.
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