Trouble in Chin…ese

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/world/asia/21china.html?th&emc=th

Sorry, but I had to see if this worked for replies, it does! BUT the instructions for posting a link still show the method I had been using, and THAT does NOT work any longer.

Edited by: mazgringo

You can still post links in the old way, as long as there is no apostrophe in the title you're giving the link.

Thanks, shilgia. Yep, what I was trying to do had an apostrophe. Why can't they TELL us these things?

I'm sure that many Chinese do not have this problem.

When it comes to difficult names, I think that this is just a bureaucratic response by the official handling it as to him/her, it may just be easier to change name than to add the difficult name to the national database (having to go through levels of higher authority).

Most Chinese just give the names they like to their children, especially those with only two names such that as in other societies, a junior may have the same name as someone from older generations.

However the Chinese from Hainan Dao (Island) Province have adopted a three-name practice; the First name is the surname or family name, the Second name is the generation name and the Third name is the given name.

The generation name is derived from a few poems or mottos (normally in a set of twenty words), with each generation adopting the word according to its generation - the first generation would have adopted the first word of the poem as its middle name, and the twentieth generation would adopt the twentieth word.

So when in Hainan Dao, if a member of the Wang clan meets another member of the Wang clan, do not be suprised if an old man addressed a young boy as "grandfather" (gong) as the boy may be from an "older generation".

It looks as if it is cropping up now, in a most unsuspect place.

"unsuspect"?

I am neither a speaker or reader of Chinese, but I have long wondered when the pictograph system of writing would collide with the real world of binary computers and their limitations. It looks as if it is cropping up now,

Whatever limitations this reflects, it certainly doesn't reflect "the real world of binary computers and their limitations." 55,000 characters or 30,000 characters? Human memory has more difficulty coping with the former, but it's all equally easy to a computer.

The only limitation, really, is on what is "practical" in the modern world: much as I like Ms. Ma's striking given name, my sympathies are largely with the Chinese government on this one. Should government computers be programmed around the whims of the obscurantist classicist grandfathers of the world?

Put another way, suppose I wanted to name my son Æþelræd, after the eponymous 10th century English king. When we go to get little Æþelræd his passport, he's going to run into a problem, and ultimately is going to have to modify the spelling to Ethelred. Ms. Ma faces a similar conundrum. She doesn't actually have to change the pronunciation of her name--there are a few dozen characters that are pronounced "cheng" in the various tones--only the way it is represented. (The article doesn't specify which tone her "cheng" is, but I'd bet it's the same third-tone "cheng" as 骋, which also means "gallop.")

OP - you might be interested in the Language Log discussion here.

I'm kinda on the fence with this one. I agree that there has to be some limitations. There are just way to many obscure Chinese characters out there and overhauling the system to support all of them (and trying to account for all of them) would be a nightmare. In a different sense, other countries deal with this. I remember reading an article awhile back about Australian couples forced to change the name's they had given their babies (mostly because they were deemed inappropriate). I do see Ma's point however; there were no limitations when she was born and it is kind of unfair to make her change her name now. Zashibis's solution might work, as the more common character has the same pronunciation (depending on tone, which we don't know) and the same meaning. For other Chinese people, changing one's name might not be this easy.

Does anyone know how the Chinese government handles the names of non-Han Chinese, such as Tibetans or Uighurs?

Edited by: anolazima