The how, what and why of Freshfields’ Chinese name

Not many outside China know Freshfields has a Chinese name and even fewer know the meaning behind it. 

As we approach the Lunar New Year (this Saturday 25th January is the first day of our Year of the Rat), I couldn’t think of a better time to share with you how Freshfields’ Chinese name came about, what the Chinese words mean and why these words have never been more relevant to us than they are in 2020.

Looking back, I could never have imagined I would pick our firm’s Chinese name as not having to use the Chinese language was a primary motivation in choosing to join Freshfields many years ago! 

Freshfields is not an easy word to enunciate and when I saw Chinese clients struggled with our name, I knew a Chinese name had to be the only way to go! 

Many Chinese clients were eager to help. One suggested New Star (新星), which I took as a compliment, but could a firm still be a “new” star 30 years after adopting the name?

At the time, I was the only Chinese associate in the Hong Kong office, and Chinese language wasn’t exactly my forte, so I turned to my mandarin tutor, Ms. Liu Yu Lan, for help. We went for words whose meaning we liked and, when pronounced in mandarin, were phonetically similar to Freshfields. We soon settled on 富而德 (Fu Er De).

I have always liked happy and auspicious words. 富 (Fu) stands for wealth, abundance, or richness. At a stretch, it is also similar to the “F” sound in Freshfields. I thought we do help to create wealth, and no Chinese would frown upon the word 富 (Fu). So choosing 富(Fu ) was easy. However, I didn’t want to give the impression that we were obsessed with making money, so we used the connecting word 而 (Er), which means ‘and’ or ‘with’, to link our third word, 德 (De).

德 ( De ) is an important concept in traditional Chinese philosophy and can be traced back over 3,000 years. Volumes have been written about the evolution of its meaning and how it has been interpreted by different Chinese philosophers over time. What I liked about the word is that it encapsulates the highest accomplishments of morality, integrity, and virtue, not just as a way to live but also as an attitude. It is said that leaders who embrace the attributes of 德 (De) gain inner strength and power. I also like some of the other qualities the word represents, such as kindness, generosity, gratitude, and excellence.

Coincidentally, 德 (De), when used as a country, stands for Germany. So “doing well with our German colleagues “ could be one loose interpretation of our Chinese name but no I couldn't take the credit of foreseeing the merger of Freshfields with Bruckhaus Deringer 10+ years before it happened.

What I had hoped our Chinese name could do is to remind our clients and ourselves that we can make money and create wealth but it should be done morally, done with integrity and done in the right way. 

Why is the meaning of our Chinese name particularly apt today? A vast quantity (and some may even argue too much) of wealth has been created in the last 30 years. Take China alone – its per capita gross national income increased from US$290 in 1985 to just over US$10,000 this year, an increase of nearly 3,500 per cent in the last 35 years, according to recent official figures.

Against a background of growing global inequality, concerns over depleting natural resources and near-irreversible climate change, a tidal wave of change is sweeping across the world in terms of what people think should be the purpose of corporations. Blackrock’s Larry Fink raised this in his annual letter in 2018 and this was followed by the Business Roundtable’s 181 leading US corporations’ Chairmen and CEOs’ declaration last August. Maximising profit is no longer the only purpose or objective of corporations. They should take on a broader role and embrace broader social responsibilities to their customers, employees and communities. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, leading academic Colin Mayers has long advocated the need for more purpose (beyond just creating shareholders value) and more trust in businesses. Leading economist Paul Collier in his 2018 work ‘The Future of Capitalism” also argues forcefully for the need to return to ethics in policymaking and a greater focus on the moral and ethical behaviour of corporations. Profit, as he sees it, is a constraint that enforces discipline on a firm, rather than defining its purpose. 

Our firm is committed to being a responsible business and I have always been very proud of our enduring efforts to initiate, support and sustain pro bono causes and activities. As one partnership across the globe, I have always been inspired by our duty to bequeath the firm in better shape than we inherited it.

At an individual level as lawyers, our ongoing strive to help maintain the rule of law is an important purpose in itself. But it is our day-to-day efforts to influence our clients to do the right thing which gives many the most satisfaction. We should be guided not only just by rules and regulations but our moral and ethical values. An important attribute of 德 (De) – acting with integrity – the highest standard of integrity is a given for lawyers. For example, Hong Kong Law Society’s practice rules have long required solicitors not to act in a way that compromises or is likely to compromise or impair their integrity.

Last November, the UK Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) also required law firms and their employees to act not just with integrity but with honesty – so that solicitors may be “trusted to the ends of the earth”. 

So help to create wealth, but do it with virtue, do it morally and with integrity, and do it with your best self. In other words, do it with more “德 (De)”. The world could use a little more of it right now.