A Chinese name often understood as 'beautiful' depending on the characters used.
Meili lives a fascinating double life across two entirely unrelated linguistic traditions. In Chinese, 美丽 (měilì) is one of the most common words for "beautiful," and as a given name it carries that luminous, direct meaning — a wish for the child to embody loveliness in all its forms. It is a popular feminine name throughout China, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora, favored for its simplicity, its pleasing tonal quality in Mandarin, and the clarity of its meaning.
In Norse mythology, Meili is something altogether different: a god, the brother of Thor, mentioned in the Eddic poem Hárbarðsljóð where Odin teases Thor by calling Meili his brother. Almost nothing else is recorded about him, making Meili one of Norse mythology's most tantalizing mysteries — a deity whose stories have been lost to time. Some scholars speculate his name is related to an Old Norse root meaning "the mild one" or possibly connects to words for travel and journeying.
This convergence — a Chinese word for beauty and a forgotten Norse god — gives the name an unusual cross-cultural resonance in the modern world. For parents with Chinese heritage, it is a natural, meaningful choice. For those drawn to Norse mythology, it evokes both the grandeur of that tradition and its irretrievable losses. As a given name in Western contexts, its soft sound and the Chinese meaning have made it quietly popular among those seeking something short, international, and genuinely lovely.