
The invented Chinese names of the 2019 Canadian federal election – ranked - firloop
http://www.nikobell.ca/the-invented-chinese-names-of-the-2019-federal-election-ranked/
======
uranusjr
As a native Chinese speaker, I find several points in the article a bit
awkward to comprehend, especially when you flip the table around. It might be
likely less than sophisticated for Françoise Duchamps to call herself Fran
Swazzy in English (I don’t think so), but I struggle to think she’d have
trouble using simply “Frances” without a last name if she goes to a
hypothetical English-speaking place where residents don’t understand much
French.

I also don’t understand the author’s lack of love to just using the straight
phonetic translation (either first-last or only first/last name).[1] Sure it’s
nice to have a Chinese name that sounds familiar, but would you expect your
(say) Indian immigrant colleague to adapt an English-sounding name when moving
to Canada? Yeah, we don’t mind you using your native name either.

Oh and the semantics don’t matter either. Lietarally _zero_ native Chinese
speaker would read 希拉里 and think “huh, hope pull inside, wierd name”, we
recognise immediately it’s foreign, just like you know Kazuhiko and Jinping
don’t have Bible reference. Heck, we don’t even think too much about meanings
of our own names that often. When’s the last time you see a guy named Chris
and think how he bears Christ?

Anyway. I don’t dislike the article, especially the latter part where the
author digs into actual examples. It is always a fun exercise to read Chinese
names, I do that a lot as well. But it’s just that, fun exercise. That’s not
how we read names in daily life, and as long as you’re happy with your
Chinese-character-spelled names (be it Chinese-style or otherwise), we are
happy to use it. Over-interpreting people’s names (especially non-native
speakers’), now _that’s_ unsophisticated.

\---

[1]: I am Taiwanese, so maybe there’s some cultral different to communities
with China origin.

~~~
wodenokoto
The author is not Chinese. It is common for people who study a foreign
language to get a passion for things that to them seems more authentic.

For example, many learners of Japanese consider English loan words inferior to
Sino Japanese words, even though in modern Japanese, they are equally
Japanese.

~~~
dnautics
I was always amused that "pine" street in San Francisco is transliterated to
"plank" in chinese. Broadway, incidentally, is "avenue of 100 old people".

~~~
solstice
Another example: the Chinese name for SF is Laojinshan (老金山) afaik, which
translates to Old Gold Mountain and sounds nothing like Hispanic/English name.
I think it dates back to the California gold rush

~~~
osdiab
It's 旧金山 (jiu jin shan), but otherwise you're right.

~~~
morningseagulls
And in case anyone was wondering, the "New Gold Mountain" is another name for
Melbourne[0].

[0]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%96%B0%E9%87%91%E5%B1%B1](https://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%96%B0%E9%87%91%E5%B1%B1)

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
The Melbourne Gold rush was in the 1850s-1860s so the "new" part has become
inaccurate.

See also: "New Forest", England, 1079.

~~~
morningseagulls
>The Melbourne Gold rush was in the 1850s-1860s so the "new" part has become
inaccurate.

It also happened just a few years (very much less than a decade) after the
California Gold Rush, and there were other gold rushes after that, so I'm not
sure why it's "new" either.

------
CharlesColeman
> The prototypical Chinese name has three characters, a single surname
> followed by a two-character given name. A smaller number of Chinese people
> only have a single given name, and a very few have two surname characters.

I'm not sure if this is correct. IIRC, in at least some areas/families, it's a
tradition to alternate between giving a one or two character name from
generation to generation. So if your parent has a two character given name,
you'll have a one character name, and vice-versa.

Another interesting characteristic of Chinese names is that given names are
very diverse and varied, while family names come from a small set (something
like a hundred or so). This is opposite from the West (or at least America)
where given names are pretty restricted (e.g. lots of Johns and Emilys) but
family names have a lot of variation (probably due to all the immigration).

~~~
morningseagulls
>>> The prototypical Chinese name has three characters, a single surname
followed by a two-character given name. A smaller number of Chinese people
only have a single given name, and a very few have two surname characters.

>I'm not sure if this is correct.

It's not. The distribution of one- and two-character given names is pretty
even in China.

>Another interesting characteristic of Chinese names is that given names are
very diverse and varied, while family names come from a small set (something
like a hundred or so). This is opposite from the West (or at least America)
where given names are pretty restricted (e.g. lots of Johns and Emilys) but
family names have a lot of variation (probably due to all the immigration).

You know, maybe we should change how we think about the ordering. Instead of
family-given or given-family, it's clearly restricted-arbitrary.

------
firloop
Looks like the site fell over.

Internet archive:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191021142028/www.nikobell.ca/t...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191021142028/www.nikobell.ca/the-
invented-chinese-names-of-the-2019-federal-election-ranked/)

------
kilo_bravo_3
This is awesome.

My Chinese name is 司馬文 "Sima Wen", with the surname being that of several
series of famous Chinese historians, emperors, and generals, and my given name
meaning culture.

My teachers were very proud of that one because it closely resembles my
English name and they said it sounded dignified. I can only assume they knew
what they were talking about.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Do you use that name with actual Chinese people, or is it more of a during-
Chinese-class thing?

I would feel weird about giving myself a rare and ultra-high-prestige name.
But, I have no idea how the Chinese would perceive it.

~~~
throwaway_bad
I would probably assume he's just really into Romance of the Three Kingdoms or
other historical dramas where the 司馬 surname is common. Or that his real name
is Zimmerman.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Or that his real name is Zimmerman.

I've read that a number of Chinese with the surname 欧阳 [Ouyang] logically
chose the English surname O'Young, confusing a lot of people who were led by
the name to expect someone more Irish.

------
gfaure
It's interesting that Jagmeet Singh's "nom de Chine" in Cantonese is 駔勉誠
(roughly, "dzong min sing"), which sounds a lot more like his real name than
the Mandarin ("zang mian cheng") does.

~~~
mleonhard
Good point. Many folks will be reading the Chinese names in Cantonese.

------
bovermyer
Does Canada have a large Chinese immigrant population? I'm curious as to why
these would be on campaign ads.

~~~
klyrs
Your question presupposes that folks of Chinese descent in Canada are
immigrants. There's been a strong Chinese community in the area since before
1900. As a comparison, my great-great grandparents emigrated from Italy in the
1920s. It's quite typical for Canadians to retain their cultural identity and
ancestral language post-immigration; the notable exception being indigenous
peoples who were forced to assimilate. Where my family immigrated to the US
and abandoned our language, I later immigrated to Canada, I was shocked to
discover an Italian community where folks are still raising their kids to
speak Italian after generations.

~~~
jaclaz
Yes, but these kids learn some spoken Italian (actually very often in the
'20's and until maybe the '70's some specific italian dialect) while they have
education ad everyday experiences outside the family in either French or
English.

So, besides the high percentage of Chinese people in Vancouver, isn't the
point about how many of them can vote but cannot read English?

------
Jun8
IDEA: A site that creates a good Chinese name either from your name or totally
from scratch, with good visualization option to tweak 10-20 factors. Uses AI
algorithms trained on nuances of names. If you pay extra, you can have the
auto-generated name tweaked by an expert, someone like the author of this
post. Sites like this exist (e.g.
[https://www.mandarintools.com/chinesename.html](https://www.mandarintools.com/chinesename.html))
but are primitive.

~~~
goodcharacters
That's a good idea ;-P I've been working on it but it's only for our internal
use at this time. Chinese names are also required in some counties in
California. I shared the following in our blog: The California State
Legislature passed a bill this year (and it was approved by the Governor on
July 12) that requires phonetic transliterations of candidates’ alphabet-based
names to appear on ballots and ballot materials in jurisdiction required to
translate ballot materials into character-based languages.
[https://service.goodcharacters.com/daily/20190701-ab-57-cand...](https://service.goodcharacters.com/daily/20190701-ab-57-candidates.html)

~~~
thaumasiotes
> requires phonetic transliterations of candidates’ alphabet-based names to
> appear on ballots and ballot materials in jurisdiction required to translate
> ballot materials into character-based languages

In my experience, Chinese versions of foreign words, including foreign names,
usually don't approach the sound of the original as closely as Chinese
phonology allows. That is, they aren't really meant as "phonetic
transliterations"; there are other options available purely within Chinese
that would approximate the original sound more closely.[1]

Instead, the goal seems to be that you're in the right ballpark on the sound,
and then you tweak the name for other factors such as character semantics
while staying somewhere in the ballpark.

And of course, once a name is conventionalized, you'd want to use that rather
than innovating a new version.

[1] Of course it's possible in general that while my foreign ears think a
different Chinese syllable would better match the foreign one, the Chinese
disagree and really believe they are using the closest available match. There
are plenty of ready examples, such as Coca-Cola, where this is obviously not
the case.

~~~
iguy
I presume most new translations now target Mandarin, but I wonder whether some
older western imports got their names in Cantonese, is this a thing?

And likewise for candidate names -- IIRC lots of people moved to BC from HK,
but perhaps a minority by now?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> I wonder whether some older western imports got their names in Cantonese, is
> this a thing?

Yes, it is the norm for older loanwords. Compare Mandarin jia-na-da [Canada]
from Cantonese ga-la-da, or Mandarin mo-xi-ge [Mexico] from Cantonese mak-sai-
go.

EDIT: it's worth observing that the Chinese themselves are generally not aware
that the older loanwords came through Cantonese.

~~~
tasogare
I wouldn't affirm Canada transliteration come from Cantonese without serious
proof. Not too long ago (about a century [1]), the initial now romanized by
<j> was written with <k>. I'm not specialist of the phonetic changes that
happen during that time in the involved languages and dialects, but it is
totally credible that 加拿大 comes from Mandarin. The initial involved in 加 seems
to have change "recently". This also explain the Peking/Beijing thing.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFEO_Chinese_transcription](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFEO_Chinese_transcription)

~~~
thaumasiotes
The Peking / Beijing thing is indeed the same thing you see in Canada /
jianada. Peking / Nanking / etc. do not come from Mandarin.

Read your own link:

> The transcription of the EFEO did not borrow its phonetics from the national
> official Standard Mandarin. Rather, it was synthesized independently to be a
> mean of Chinese dialects, and shows a state of sounds a little older in form

~~~
tasogare
Reading is good, understanding the implications is better. Standard Mandarin
is newer than the period at which Canada would appear as a loanword in
Chinese, so of course it is not drawn from that language. But that doesn't
mean it is Cantonese either. Moreover, I wrote Mandarin (a Chinese languages
with a variety of dialects), not Standard Mandarin (the language taught at
school).

In particular, for the Beijing case, South Mandarin is involved:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_postal_romanization#Ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_postal_romanization#Main_features).

------
cgh
For those who were unaware, Canada is having its federal election today. Its
no-fuss nature is an interesting contrast to the shenanigans of our southern
neighbour.

------
mc32
>”Chinese has no bite-sized phonetic components with which to build foreign
sounds...”

That’s not entirely true. There is bopomofodutunuh [1]. Maybe it’s not as well
known as Kana.

[1][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo)

~~~
jsharf
That's mostly used in Taiwan for typing, I don't think it's really common in
China. I could be wrong though.

Also, I think it would be weird to have a name made of those characters.
They're strictly phonetic -- I've never seen a Chinese name made out of
bopomofo letters.

~~~
yorwba
Bopomofo was phased out as the official transliteration system in the PRC in
1958 and replaced by Pinyin. Most Mainland Chinese probably won't be able to
read Bopomofo. And if you're going to use an alphabetic writing system like
Pinyin, you might as well use the original orthography and skip the need for
transliteration altogether.

------
wodenokoto
> I’ve collected names from the sublime—Vancouver city council candidate Jean
> Swanson’s (金玉鹅) beautifully phonetic and semantic rendering of her name—

Was that joke? At least in Japanese, the two first are a very common
colloquial for testicles.

~~~
azurezyq
I don't think it means that in Chinese. However I agree it is not a decent
name.

金 = gold/golden, 玉 = jade, 鹅 = goose

Usually the more chars resembling wealth in your name, the less educated
family you may be from. Basically it just shows your eagerness to become rich.
Not to mention the last character, which is rarely used char in names, who
wants to name their child "goose"?

金 and 玉 are actually common in names, but usually combined with other good
words like 诺(promise), 心(heart),... something like that. Decent names are not
that straightforward and I think it may be the same in the western world.

~~~
morningseagulls
>鹅 = goose

鹅 can refer to quite a few birds in Chinese[0], and in this case, since the
article noted:

 _Vancouver city council candidate Jean Swanson’s (金玉鹅) [has a] beautifully
phonetic and semantic rendering of her name_

鹅 is probably referring to 天鹅 ("swan")[1], which is part of Swanson's family
name.

A bit of an explainer: In names, a word that's usually two characters long is
often truncated. For example, the name of the kirin (麒麟) is often used in
names, but is often truncated to 麟 (麒 is also possible) so that another
character (e.g. a verb) can be introduced, e.g. Alan Tam's given name[2], 詠麟,
means to rhapsodise about the kirin.

>Usually the more chars resembling wealth in your name, the less educated
family you may be from.

Swanson's an anti-poverty activist,[3] so perhaps that may explain something
about why 金玉 might have been appealing as a reference to 金玉滿堂.

Her party "has traditionally been associated with tenants, environmentalists,
and the labour movement"[4], so I imagine that perhaps she wanted something
green in the name as well, and jade (玉) fits the bill.

[0]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%B5%9D#Chinese](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%B5%9D#Chinese)

[1]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A9%E9%B5%9D#Chinese](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A9%E9%B5%9D#Chinese)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Tam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Tam)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Swanson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Swanson)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Progressive_Elect...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Progressive_Electors)

~~~
nichtich
She should use 鹄(swan) instead of 鹅(goose). Yes people don't usually use this
character for swan and call the thing sky goose instead, but most people know
of it as it's part of the idiom: 燕雀安知鸿鹄之志.

~~~
morningseagulls
>She should use 鹄(swan) instead of 鹅(goose). Yes people don't usually use this
character for swan

I've never heard of or seen this character until today.

>most people know of it as it's part of the idiom: 燕雀安知鸿鹄之志.

"Most people" usually mean "people around me", so it's not indicative.

There are plenty of ethnic Chinese people not living in China who might not
have heard of this idiom -- in part because their knowledge of Chinese may not
be as deep as people who've gone through the Chinese education system -- and
one of them had probably advised Swanson on her name choice.

------
rixtox
After McDonald's (China) was acquired, McDonald's (Global) banned them from
using McDonald's and its phonetic name 麥當勞 in China. It then changed its name
to 金拱門, which literally means Golden Arches. Chinese people found it so
hilarious that it went so viral. News got over nine billion views. It was such
a success for marketing, but it doesn't hold the same profile as before.

~~~
Erwin
They sure seem different than the ordinary McD in other countries.

The McD online ordering website in China is
[https://www.4008-517-517.cn](https://www.4008-517-517.cn) \-- apparently
"517" sounds like "I want to eat".

They sell a "Land, Air, Sea Warfare" combo menu which sounds ominous, but
apparently it's commonly known "secret menu" item on ordinary McDonalds
combining a Big Mac, McChicken and the McFish.

~~~
magic_beans
So odd to see numerical URLs. There was an article here on HN about that a
month or so ago.

------
dwohnitmok
If we expand the ranking to native historical names, I've always found the
presence of somewhat derogatory or just absurd names among ancient Chinese
figures fascinating and have a hard time fathoming why a parent would gives
these to a child.

Note the following are not nicknames. These are given names.

Some I can chalk up to probably being purely phonetic spellings (不寿 a.k.a.
Not-Long-Lived a king of Yue 越, who doesn't _seem_ to have lived a
particularly short life, but his date of birth is unknown). Others to their
names later taking on negative connotations because of their own actions (嫪毐
Lao Ai where 毐 later became used to describe immoral people, presumably
because he pretended to be a eunuch, slept with the mother of Qin Shihuangdi,
the first emperor of China, and then led a failed revolution against the
emperor's father, the king of Qin. His whole story is insane. He's a performer
who does tricks with his large penis who got used in a game of political
intrigue by Lu Buwei to protect Lu Buwei from the king of Qin.).

There still others that maybe had their names invented or twisted to suit
stories. See for example 牛缺(Lacking Niu), a high-ranking scholar who appears
in 吕氏春秋 (Master Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals) who goes on a trip through the
desert, has everything stolen from him, and then is later killed by his
robbers for good measure.

And yet others may be a result of trying to ward off evil or encourage modesty
by intentionally giving children modest or unappealing names.

However, there's some, especially from the Warring States and earlier, that
just seem to be inexplicably absurd names, with a large focus on "not."

晋黑臀 (Black-Butt Jin), also known by his title Duke Cheng of Jin. Perhaps he
just had very literal parents.

叔孙不敢 (Doesn't-Dare/Not-Brave Shusun), a Lu court official. Sure his father
tried and failed to help Duke Zhao of Lu, but the historical account makes it
sound like that probably happened after Doesn't-Dare's birth.

韩不信/韩不佞 (Not-Credible Han/Unworthy Han). Granted the latter could also mean
not given to sophistry, but still why would you take that chance with a child
(both meanings are attested to in fairly ancient sources)?

秦非 (Not Qin, note order is flipped compared to English names so it's literally
Qin Not). A disciple of Confucius.

皇非我 (Not-Me Huang). An official of the kingdom of Song. Again maybe a result
of traditions trying to protect children from evil spirits, but I still find
it rather amusing.

I've never really heard a good explanation for these, other than given names
didn't really matter back then, rather it was adult honorary names (e.g. Zi or
字) that mattered more, which sure I guess I can believe. On the other hand, if
that was the case I'd expect a cornucopia of awful names rather than the
comparatively few, but still abnormally many, that I observe now.

~~~
morningseagulls
>皇非我 (Not-Me Huang). An official of the kingdom of Song. Again maybe a result
of traditions trying to protect children from evil spirits, but I still find
it rather amusing.

I'd think that, since 皇 means "emperor", the name is protective in the sense
that it's trying to say "no, no, I'm not the emperor".

>I've never really heard a good explanation for these, other than given names
didn't really matter back then, rather it was adult honorary names (e.g. Zi or
字) that mattered more, which sure I guess I can believe. On the other hand, if
that was the case I'd expect a cornucopia of awful names rather than the
comparatively few, but still abnormally many, that I observe now.

Presumably, honorary names are the ones that are recorded, since they mattered
more, not the awful names given by your parents or nicknames.

~~~
dwohnitmok
This came before the usage of 皇 to broadly mean emperor (i.e. during the
Spring and Autumn period before the Qin dynasty), although it is used to
describe the three mythical emperors. Here it's a clan name (氏), the common
clan name of the kingdom of Song.

When recording names in historical records usually the given name as well as
honorary name are given as well (honorary names of these figures are all
recorded alongside these given names and are far more ordinary).

~~~
morningseagulls
>This came before the usage of 皇 to broadly mean emperor (i.e. during the
Spring and Autumn period before the Qin dynasty), although it is used to
describe the three mythical emperors. Here it's a clan name (氏), the common
clan name of the kingdom of Song.

Good to know.

>When recording names in historical records usually the given name as well as
honorary name are given as well (honorary names of these figures are all
recorded alongside these given names and are far more ordinary).

I think the unusual names you've come across are those that've slipped through
the cracks. In any case, Chinese men back then would have been given a few
names before they reached adulthood: usually, a "milk name" from their parents
and another (usually more dignified) name when they attend school. The
honorary name comes much later. The unusual names may have been "milk names"
that survived the cull because the bearers might not have attended school, for
example.

Of course, the practice hasn't survived into the modern age, but you still see
this practice in the Arabic world, where people can have multiple aliases. So
what you labelled as the "given name" need not be the "given name" we
understand today, but just the name that's survived to adulthood that's not
the honorary name, which comes later.

------
ridaj
I definitely need a better Chinese name. How can I get one?

~~~
tasogare
Consult Chinese speaking people? Try something then ask advices. Iterate
quickly a few times and you should be set.

------
binarysolo
Native Mandarin speaker here - please take this article with a grain of salt
as it reeks of whitesplaining.

I know the writer spent a bunch of time in China but a bunch of the "nuance"
of how the names are interpreted seem either excessive or overinterpretive.

Just-another-opinion: As a Chinese person I actually prefer direct
translations such as 川普 (Trump) as the name is usually pretty distinct, and
people who share the same surname can have different characters to represent
them.

Off-handedly, the characters used to translate a person's name often times can
convey additional info - I can't think of too many specifics by country, but
it's very easy to tell who's from Japan because they just take the kanji and
use the Chinese translation (which butchers the pronunciation), or Korean
because certain characters are almost always used for translating certain
surnames (such as 金 -> Kim).

~~~
morningseagulls
>please take this article with a grain of salt as it reeks of whitesplaining.

Agreed. Also, most Chinese names are "invented" anyway, so why is that in the
headline?

