Chinese orphanages and children’s names

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I was amazed and appalled to discover today that a widespread practice for naming abandoned children in China has been to assign the family name after the name of the city of the orphanage. For example, many such children from Guangzhou have been assigned the family name of Guang and those from Shenzhen have been called Shen.

China doesn’t have the same range of surnames of Western countries (more about that some other time), so uncommon names stick out even more there than in the West. Giving children family names like Guang and Shen is not altogether unlike branding their foreheads and ID cards with the word “orphan.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, the given names assigned to children have been largely pro forma as well, with elements of even those often based on geography. Thus, children in the Guangzhou orphanage have often had names of places within the city incorporated into their names, such as “Tian,” “Bai,” and “Li,” with those representing the city’s Tianhe, Baiyun, and Liwan districts, respectively.

Naming someone Li after the Liwan District (荔灣區) is pretty much the same as calling that person “Lychee.”

The non-geographical elements in given names have often been Yong (as in 勇敢, brave), Hong (紅/红, red — often associated with communism), Qiang (強/强, strong), Wen (文, literacy, culture), Ping (as in 浮萍, duckweed), or Cui (翠, emerald green).

Taken as a whole, these names tend to mark children as having been residents of an orphanage and, as my source article states, “are not good for their psychology when they try to interact with the outside world, the orphanage has found.”

No kidding. Just how many decades did it take to figure that out?

Fortunately, the practice has changed, at least in Guangzhou:

Starting this year, Guangzhou’s orphanage has stopped giving its wards the surname “Guang” to prevent them from being identified as orphans.

All children adopted by the orphanage are being given the surname “Li” this year, the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily said yesterday. “Wang” will be used next year, followed by other Chinese surnames listed in the “Baijiaxing,” a book of 100 common surnames. Staff members of the orphanage said they would also try to think of unique names for each child, rather than middle names representing the location of orphanage, and a randomly picked given name.

The children can also pick their own name later if they do not like the name given by the institute, the head of the orphanage said.

I wonder how many Westerners who have adopted children from China have innocently continued to use such pro forma names, thinking that they must have been given especially and uniquely to their child.

source: Guang dropped as surname for orphans, Shenzhen Daily, February 13, 2006

KMT chairman reiterates support for Hanyu Pinyin

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Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, who also serves as chairman of the Kuomintang, recently gave an interview (video) with the BBC’s Mandarin service. He also took questions from callers. One dealt with the issue of romanization.

Ma, who will almost certainly be the KMT’s presidential candidate in 2008 and will likely win if the DPP doesn’t get its act together, again backed Hanyu Pinyin for Taiwan.

I haven’t yet watched the entire piece, which lasts an hour, so I’ll use a newspaper report of this:

Duìyú pīnyīn wèntí, Mǎ Yīngjiǔ biǎoshì, Hànyǔ Pīnyīn suī bù wánměi, dànshì quánshìjiè shǐyònglǜ dá bǎi fēnzhī 80 zhì 90, rúguǒ Táiwān jiānchí Tōngyòng Pīnyīn, wúfǎ yǔ guójì jiēguǐ, zhōngjiāng shòudào shānghài.
(On the question of romanization, Ma said that although Hanyu Pinyin isn’t perfect its international use rate is 80 or 90 percent. If Taiwan persists in using Tongyong Pinyin, Taiwan won’t be able to participate in international links and will finally suffer for it.)

Ma, who also serves as mayor of Taipei, initiated the change of the capital city’s romanization system to Hanyu Pinyin, a move widely applauded by Taiwan’s foreign community.

If anyone watches the whole video, I’d appreciate hearing just when in the broadcast Ma made his remarks on this.

sources:

make traditional Chinese characters part of world cultural heritage: Taipei mayor

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Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (???) has urged the UN to declare traditional Chinese characters a world cultural heritage, fearing they are fading into oblivion. At a meeting with Taiwanese in Geneva, Ma said the adoption by China of simplified characters has rendered them less and less recognizable in the Chinese-speaking world. Ma said he was barred from applying to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to preserve the traditional characters because Taiwan is not a UN member.

I think “fading into oblivion” is a bit strong.

source: Ma lauds traditional script, Taipei Times, February 11, 2006

certifying Mandarin teachers in Taiwan

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Taiwan’s Ministry of Education hopes to introduce a certification system for teachers of Mandarin as a foreign language. David has already stated what I would:

It would be interesting to know whether knowledge of Hanyu Pinyin and simplified characters is necessary to obtain certification. It does seem like a good idea, but unless the standards for certification are set at a high level then it won’t achieve much.

sources:

Shanghai students to focus more on Pinyin at first

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Some 20 percent fewer characters will have to be learned during a child’s first two years of school in Shanghai, with more attention being devoted to Pinyin. I’d be happier if this were everywhere, including areas where the native language is Mandarin, but this is good news nonetheless.

Shanghai primary school students will be required to learn 20 percent fewer Chinese characters but spend more time on pinyin in their first two school years, the Shanghai Education Commission said yesterday.

The reform is meant to ease the study burden by making language learning less of a chore.

Starting in the spring semester which beings next week, first-year students will be required to recognize 364 Chinese characters compared with the previous 460.

Altogether 205 characters will be canceled in first two school years out of the former 1,000-plus.

“Despite the city’s education reform, studies we’ve performed in the past months still suggested that young pupils were over-burdened with character recognition and writing tasks. And that reduces a child’s interest in learning,” said Qu Jun, the education commission’s vice director.

Most of the characters eliminated from the requirement list were considered complicated. The canceled contents might be left for extracurricular self-study or postponed to be taught later, authorities said.

It wouldn’t be much help if students have to learn those characters during the same years anyway, just outside of school. Postponing the memorizing of them is the only way for this to make any real difference.

But commission officials said that they haven’t worked out any punishments yet for those who violate the rule.

Also, teachers are being required to spend more time on pinyin — a system that translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet — during the first two years of school.

The final paragraph above has a serious error. Pinyin is not “a system that translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet.” This sort of thinking is behind a lot of the confusion related to the nature of Chinese characters, the sinitic languages, and Pinyin. The distinction is important: Pinyin is for the Mandarin language, not for Chinese characters.

source: Primary students learn less Chinese characters, Shanghai Daily (via Xinhua), February 10, 2006

Taipei street names and tone marks

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Here’s another in my series on official signage in the Taipei area.

Taipei has more than 630 different street names. Although none of these are homophonous, five pairs of names should have tone marks added to the Hanyu Pinyin so that the names will be easily distinguished from one another.

But whoever makes the signs should be especially careful because the only official signage with tone marks I’ve seen in the Taipei area has been ugly and inept. (But those signs were in Taipei County, not Taipei City.)

Chinese characters Pinyin and English mix
景華街 Jǐnghuá St.
景化街 Jǐnghuà St.
同安街 Tóng’ān St.
通安街 Tōng’ān St.
萬慶街 Wànqìng St.
萬青街 Wànqīng St.
五常街 Wǔcháng St.
武昌街 Wǔchāng St.
向陽路 Xiàngyáng Rd.
襄陽路 Xiāngyáng Rd.

Note the use of an apostrophe in “Tong’an.” For more on this, see ‘Hot-Milk Road’ and other street-name errors.

For a related entry, see Taipei street names and the monosyllabic myth.

‘Hot-Milk Road’ and other street-name errors

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Just 3.6 percent of Taipei’s street names need apostrophes. But those that need them really do need them, and Taipei’s ill-advised, counterproductive, and downright annoying InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion on street signs is no substitute for doing things right.

Because Taipei continues to omit required apostrophes from street names, one of the city’s main thoroughfares is labeled the Mandarin equivalent of Hot-Milk Road. This is because according to the rules of Hanyu Pinyin RENAI is RE+NAI, not REN+AI. Thus, rather than a road named after rén’ài (love for one’s fellow man; humanity; 仁愛), Taipei has rènǎi (hot milk) road (熱奶路).

I’m not going to bother giving all of the misleading readings, as I did in my earlier entry on mistakes in Taipei’s MRT system. But there are plenty of awkward results of Taipei’s mistakes.

Below are all of Taipei’s street names that require an apostrophe. Almost all of these contain the character 安 (an).

Note the tone marks on Tóng’ān St. (同安街) and Tōng’ān St. (通安街). More about those in a later entry.

Chinese characters Pinyin and English mix
保安街 Bao’an St.
北安路 Bei’an Rd.
博愛路 Bo’ai Rd.
長安東路 Chang’an E. Rd.
長安西路 Chang’an W. Rd.
大安路 Da’an Rd.
惠安街 Hui’an St.
民安巷 Min’an Ln.
寧安街 Ning’an St.
農安街 Nong’an St.
仁愛路 Ren’ai Rd.
瑞安街 Rui’an St.
泰安街 Tai’an St.
同安街 Tóng’ān St.
通安街 Tōng’ān St.
萬安街 Wan’an St.
西安街 Xi’an St.
新安路 Xin’an Rd.
信安街 Xin’an St.
興安街 Xing’an St.
鍚安巷 Yang’an Ln.
永安街 Yong’an St.
詔安街 Zhao’an St.

mistakes in Taipei’s MRT system

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If Taipei’s MRT (mass rapid-transit) system doesn’t finally get its Pinyin right when the next set of stations opens later this year, I propose that the 永安 (Yǒng’ān / “perpetual peace”) station be renamed 庸暗 (Yōng’àn / “ignorant”) station, in accord with how the error in the romanization of the name has gone uncorrected for several years.

Given the nature of the error, mine is a relatively polite suggestion. The way the station name is written now, “Yongan,” actually much more strongly suggests the distinctly rude “yòng gàn” (用幹 / use fuck). The problem with this and other MRT station names has two main causes:

  1. The first rule of Hanyu Pinyin — words, not syllables, are the basic units when writing in romanization — has not been followed properly. (中文)
  2. Taipei has continued its long and ignoble tradition of leaving out required apostrophes in romanization.

A little more now on the second point. In the bad old days of not so many years ago, when Taipei used bastardized Wade-Giles for signs marking streets and MRT stations, the lack of apostrophes made the majority of such signs unreliable. (The capital city’s appallingly sloppy spelling didn’t help, either.) Since 25 percent of Mandarin’s syllables require apostrophes when written in Wade-Giles, that made for a lot of missing apostrophes — and a huge mess.

Fortunately, Taipei has now adopted Hanyu Pinyin, which, incidentally, requires no apostrophes whatsoever within individual syllables. The system, however, does require an apostrophe between some syllables. Although these are very seldom required — the apostrophe occurs in only about 2 percent of Mandarin words written in Hanyu Pinyin — they’re still a crucial part of the system and cannot be omitted. (I don’t want to overburden this post, so later I’ll add a separate Web page explaining the rules for Pinyin’s syllable boundaries and when to use apostrophes.)

The following MRT stations have their names miswritten at present. These need correcting on all MRT maps, station signage, etc.: 唭哩岸站, 大安站, 景安站, and 永安市場站.

Chinese characters for MRT station name Proper Hanyu Pinyin Incorrect current form How the incorrect current form is read according to Pinyin’s rules
唭哩岸 Qili’an Qilian qi+lian
ㄑㄧ ㄌㄧㄢ (乞憐)
大安 Da’an Daan (This doesn’t have a proper reading. It’s just wrong regardless.)
景安 Jing’an Jingan jin+gan
ㄐㄧㄣ ㄍㄢ (金幹)
永安[市場] Yong’an Yongan (This doesn’t have a proper reading. But it strongly suggests a typo
for yong+gan
ㄩㄥ ㄍㄢ 用幹)

Please, Taipei Department of Transportation and Taipei Rapid Transit Corp., don’t make us beg for mercy (乞憐, qǐlián)! Give us proper Pinyin. We need Qili’an (ㄑㄧ ㄌㄧ ㄢ), not Qilian (ㄑㄧ ㄌㄧㄢ).

I should probably add that the solution is most emphatically not to use InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion, a horrible perversion of proper style that should never have been used in Taipei and should never be adopted elsewhere. All uses of InTerCaPiTaLiZaTion and Taipei’s “nicknumbering” system should be removed from the MRT system when the new maps and signage are made.