{"id":8763,"date":"2023-09-24T22:15:41","date_gmt":"2023-09-24T14:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=8763"},"modified":"2023-09-24T22:15:41","modified_gmt":"2023-09-24T14:15:41","slug":"terry-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2023\/terry-who\/","title":{"rendered":"Terry who?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"photo<\/a><\/p>\n

Terry Gou, the billionaire head of Foxconn, has been running an independent campaign for president of Taiwan. He doesn’t seem to be running this very well — but that’s not a romanization-related matter. <\/p>\n

Anyway, I’ve been looking for an excuse to write about his name, and a photo in today’s news offers just that.<\/p>\n

First, let’s get the biggest oddity out of the way: Why does Terry Gou misspell his own name? <\/em><\/p>\n

His English name is “Terry Gou” (spelled as such). His Mandarin name, however, is Guō Tái-míng\/ Guo Tai-ming \/ 郭台銘. Why is he a G-O-U<\/em> and not a G-U-O<\/em> (or, for that matter, not a K-U-O<\/em>, the spelling most people in Taiwan with that surname use)? <\/p>\n

Sorry, I have no answer to this. I’m just noting that it’s weird. <\/p>\n

Both of his parents are mainlanders from Shanxi<\/a>, in the north of China, so this wouldn’t be related to a Taiwanese pronunciation. No major romanization system in Taiwan for Mandarin<\/a> uses G-O-U for this surname. And G-O-U doesn’t make sense as an ad-hoc spelling for G-U-O\/K-U-O.<\/p>\n

Maybe:<\/p>\n