斯坦佛

Variant transliteration of 'Stanford'. The mainstream rendering is 斯坦福 (Sītǎnfú) — using 福 ('fortune') for the '-ford' ending — and that is what most Chinese newsrooms and Stanford University's own Chinese-language materials use. 斯坦佛 (with 佛, 'Buddha') is an older or Hong Kong / Taiwan-flavored variant you'll occasionally still see in subtitles, older newspapers, and informal writing.

Both 福 and 佛 are reasonable phonetic stand-ins for English '-ford' (final unstressed /-fərd/ → /fú/ or /fó/). When you see 斯坦佛, mentally swap to 斯坦福 and you have the standard form.