{"id":974,"date":"2008-02-10T08:34:09","date_gmt":"2008-02-10T00:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2008\/pinyin-in-space\/"},"modified":"2015-12-17T18:23:50","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T10:23:50","slug":"pinyin-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2008\/pinyin-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinyin in space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stories about the official approval last September of the name of “Chiayi” for an asteroid\/planetoid\/minor planet (not to be confused with Pluto, the “dwarf planet<\/a>“) discovered by astronomers with Taiwan’s National Central University drew my attention to the fact that another minor planet already bears the name of the university — and that they named it using Tongyong Pinyin: “Jhongda” (i.e., Zhōng-Dà, the short form of the school’s name in Mandarin, Guólì Zhōngyāng Dàxué).<\/p>\n

There are plenty of planetoids bearing names in Hanyu Pinyin, e.g. Chongqing, Guangzhou, Guizhou, Beijingdaxue [i.e., Beijing Daxue], Beishida [i.e., Bei-Shi-Da], and Zirankexuejijin [i.e., Ziran Kexue Jijin]. <\/p>\n

Omitting spaces is common in the names as a whole, though some of them have spaces. And some have hyphens. <\/p>\n

Although the statistics of diacritical characters in minor planets’ names<\/a> (a list after my own heart) shows that, as of June 1997, 667 (4.83%) of the 13,805 named minor planets had diacritical characters in their names, I didn’t spot any Hanyu Pinyin names with tone marks. The mark for first tone doesn’t appear on the list even once.<\/p>\n

I wish they’d followed Tongyong when naming asteroid Chiayi, because that way they would have ended up with the same spelling that Hanyu Pinyin uses: Jiayi. But I guess the solar system’s big enough for Wade-Giles as well. <\/p>\n

Here are some Google search figures from Taiwan government domains. <\/p>\n