{"id":5204,"date":"2011-11-19T11:19:39","date_gmt":"2011-11-19T03:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=5204"},"modified":"2018-08-28T16:23:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T08:23:27","slug":"laozi-or-lao-zi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2011\/laozi-or-lao-zi\/","title":{"rendered":"Laozi or Lao Zi?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My previous post mentioned a Confucius Avenue (and a Christ Avenue<\/a>) on a university campus in Taipei. That post was mainly about the photo. But here I’d like to get back to the field of Pinyin orthography. <\/p>\n

For names such as that of Confucius, when writing in Pinyin are you supposed to use a solid form (i.e., Kǒngzǐ<\/span>), a separated form (Kǒng Zǐ<\/span>), or a hyphenated form (Kǒng-zǐ<\/span>)? <\/p>\n

I tend to respond to those sorts of questions by asking What would Yin Binyong do?<\/em><\/p>\n

Interestingly, this is an area in which he changed his mind. His first book on Pinyin orthography, Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography<\/em><\/a>, says to write such names separately<\/a> (see pp. 163-165). Yet Yin also notes that Kǒngzǐ<\/span> and Mèngzǐ<\/span> are “conventionally written as single units.” <\/p>\n

But his second book, Xinhua Pinxie Cidian<\/em>, Yin just writes all the -zǐ<\/em> names solid. That’s also what the example in the official short version of the rules for Pinyin<\/a> gives. So I recommend going with the solid form. <\/p>\n

Thus, use Laozi<\/em>, Kongzi<\/em>, Mengzi<\/em>, Mozi<\/em>, and Zhuangzi<\/em>, not<\/strong> Lao Zi (or Lao-zi), Kong Zi (or Kong-zi), Mo Zi (or Mo-zi), and Zhuang Zi (or Zhuang-zi). <\/p>\n

Lǎozǐ<\/span> Lǎo Zǐ<\/span><\/div>\n

The world’s not going to end if you don’t follow this particular convention, though. I see, for example, that I have used “Sun Zi” in the past. But consistency makes things easier in the long run, so I’ll try to stick with the solid form from this point on.<\/p>\n

Of course, where Lao<\/em> is used before a surname, it’s separate: Lao Wang<\/em>, Lao Chen<\/em>, etc. Interestingly, “Lao cannot be used with two-syllable surnames such as Ōuyáng<\/span> 欧阳 [歐陽].” That last part, however, isn’t an orthographic matter. Does anyone know more about such nickname words (e.g., Lao, Xiao, Da) and disyllabic family names? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My previous post mentioned a Confucius Avenue (and a Christ Avenue) on a university campus in Taipei. That post was mainly about the photo. But here I’d like to get back to the field of Pinyin orthography. For names such … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28,32,20,19,137],"tags":[787,789,788,404,406,405],"class_list":["post-5204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-languages","category-mandarin","category-pinyin","category-romanization","category-taoism","tag-confucius","tag-kong-zi","tag-kongzi","tag-lao-tzu","tag-lao-zi","tag-laozi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5204"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7921,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5204\/revisions\/7921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}