IN REPORTS ABOUT the death of the pope, the mainland Chinese media refers to John Paul II as 约翰·保罗二世, using the standard phonetics Yuēhàn for John and Bǎoluó for Paul. Within the Chinese Catholic Church, however, the former Pope was known as 若望保禄二世, in which John is transliterated as Ruòwàng, and Paul as Bǎolù, following the Catholic tradition for apostolic names.
John has three common transliterations. 约翰 is used in the Protestant church for the Evangelist and the Baptist, and it is the most common form in everyday use (约翰·穆勒 is John Stuart Mill, for example). 若望 is used in the Catholic church for the Evangelist, saints, popes, and practically everyone except John the Baptist, who gets called 若翰, Ruòhàn.
In general, the Chinese transliterations of western names follow the Protestant model, since Protestant missionaries arrived with the influx of western culture during the 19th century. The earlier Catholic forms did not gain much currency, although they are still used within the Catholic church itself.
To make things more confusing, the roster of saints' names was revised, giving every Catholic saint an older, closer approximation, and a newer form that is limited to two characters per word. St. Thomas Aquinas was originally called 圣多玛斯·阿奎那, but this has been revised to the much pithier 圣道茂. These new names are not much used, at least in my experience.
One interesting Protestant transliteration that was not widely adopted is 阿拉法 (ālāfǎ) for alpha ("I am the alpha and the omega..."). Here, the choice was made to keep the [l] sound at the cost of introducing an extra syllable. The standard form is 阿尔法 (ā'ěrfǎ), which follows the convention of using an "er" element to represent a syllable-ending [l] sound. To my ears it sounds more natural; 阿拉法 calls up late Palestinian leader Arafat (阿拉法特).
Addendum: The Beijing News runs its coverage of the Pope's death under the headline 《罗马教皇保罗二世去世》, or "Pope Paul II Passes Away," 534 years too late.
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