名字 (míng zi) literally combines 名 (míng), meaning 'name' or 'reputation', and 字 (zì), meaning 'character' or 'word'. Together, they form the common colloquial term for 'name' — referring to a person’s given name, family name, or full name in everyday speech. Unlike the more formal term 姓名 (xìngmíng), which emphasizes the full personal name including surname and given name, 名字 is neutral, widely used, and appropriate in casual and semi-formal contexts such as introductions, forms, or conversations with friends and colleagues.

The word is almost always used as a single noun unit and rarely split; it does not take measure words like 个 in neutral contexts (e.g., you say 我的名字, not *我一个名字). It can refer to human names exclusively — not brands, places, or animals — and appears frequently in questions like 你叫什么名字？('What’s your name?') or statements like 这是我的名字 ('This is my name'). While 字 alone can mean 'character' or 'written character', in 名字 it functions purely as part of the compound and carries no independent semantic weight.