Chinese place names are the names of places in China. Since the Chinese language has not had any sort of phonetic alphabet until only about a few hundred years ago (compared to the thousands of years the Chinese characters have been used), there has been a lot of confusion on naming places in Chinese. Since Chinese characters are a logographic writing system, meaning that the writing mainly shows the words' meaning rather than its pronunciation, it can be used to write down words in many different languages. On top of all this, the Chinese language is not one unified language, but an entire branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Many of the Chinese languages or dialects are mutually unintelligible, which means a speaker of one language or dialect cannot understand a speaker of another unless one of them already knew the other's language or dialect. For example, Mandarin and Cantonese are both dialects of Chinese, but they are so different from each other than their speakers cannot understand the other unless at least one speaker knew both. Therefore, knowing which spoken dialect to use when writing out the name in the Roman alphabet, which is a phonetic writing system and not a logographic one, can be challenging. For example, while the name of the city is written as 北京 in Chinese, it is called "Běijīng" in Mandarin and "Bak1 Ging1" in Cantonese.
In mainland China, most place names are in Mandarin Chinese, the country's official spoken language. Even though the sounds of Mandarin Chinese have not changed for a long time, there were many different ways to write Chinese place names in Mandarin using the Roman alphabet, or many different kinds of romanizations. This created a lot of confusion and misinformation for non-Chinese speakers on what to call Chinese place names. For example, Beijing was spelled Peking, Nanjing was called Nanking, Tianjin was spelled Tiantsin, and Qingdao was spelled Tsingtao. These many spelling systems caused confusion among non-Chinese speakers and therefore whatever name speakers of other languages called place names ended up sounding very different from Mandarin Chinese. In order to teach people how to correctly pronounce Mandarin Chinese, to mainland Chinese and non-Chinese alike, the Chinese Communist Party made Hanyu Pinyin the only accepted romanization in official use and banned all other romanizations in official use in mainland China. Peking became Beijing, Nanking became Nanjing, Tiantsin became Tianjin, and Tsingtao became Qingdao. While the pronunciation of these place names stayed the same in Mandarin, it allowed non-Chinese speakers, especially English speakers, to say Chinese place names much more accurately to their Mandarin pronunciations.
However, in the autonomous regions, places in China where certain minority groups make up a large part of the region's population, many place names changed back from Chinese to the local languages in order to represent the local languages. For example, the city of Dihua (迪化) was changed back to Urumqi, which is the name of the city in the local Uyghur language, after the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was formed.
In Taiwan, where Mandarin Chinese is also the official language, the spelling of place names tends to be inconsistent. The names of Taiwanese cities are usually in Chinese postal romanization. This is why the cities are spelled Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Taichung instead of Taibei, Gaoxiong, and Taizhong, which is how they would be spelled in Hanyu Pinyin. This is the case because many Taiwanese dislike using Hanyu Pinyin (even though it is the standard romanization of Mandarin Chinese worldwide) because it was created by the Chinese Communist Party, which many Taiwanese do not like. While within northern Taiwanese cities most names of streets, districts, and subway stops are in Hanyu Pinyin (since Hanyu Pinyin is generally more accepted in the north), cities in southern Taiwan use many different spelling systems simply to resist using Hanyu Pinyin. In several cases, the exact same street can be spelled several different ways. For example, in Banqiao, Xinzhan Road (新站路) is spelled "Shinjann Rd." on one section and "Sin Jhan Rd." on another.
François N. Macerola
François N. Macerola (January 31, 1942 – November 8, 2018) was a Canadian lawyer and movie executive. He was born in Montreal, Quebec. Macerola worked for the National Film Board of Canada and Telefilm Canada. His career began in 1976.
Macerola dealt with the controversy surrounding the 1982 docudrama "The Kid Who Couldn't Miss", about the life of fighter pilot Billy Bishop because the movie poorly depicted his life with accuracy.
Macerola died on the morning of November 8, 2018 in Montreal at the age of 76.
Irene Cara
Irene Cara Escalara (born March 18, 1959) is an American singer-songwriter, actress and dancer. She co-wrote the song "Flashdance... What a Feeling" from the movie "Flashdance". She won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song. For that same song, she also won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
Cara played Coco Hernandez in the 1980 movie "Fame". Before that, she played Sparkle Williams in the 1976 musical-drama movie "Sparkle".
In 1982 Cara earned an Image Award for Best Actress when she co-starred in NBC's Movie of the Week, "Sister, Sister".
Cara was born in The Bronx, New York City, New York.
Richard Paul Conaboy
Richard Paul Conaboy (June 12, 1925 – November 9, 2018) was an American judge. He was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1992. He was appointed by President Jimmy Carter. From 1989 to 1992, he was Chief Judge of the court. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Conaboy died on November 9, 2018 at a hospital in Scranton from a heart attack at the age of 93.
Manuel Real
Manuel Lawrence Real (January 27, 1924 – June 26, 2019) was a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He was appointed in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was the last remaining federal judge in active service appointed by Johnson.
He was the longest-serving active federal judge until his retirement in 2018.
Real died on June 26, 2019 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 95.
Jack B. Weinstein
Jack Bertrand Weinstein (August 10, 1921 – June 15, 2021) was an American Senior District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He was on the court from 1967 to 1993 after being appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. From 1980 to 1988, he was Chief Judge. Weinstein was born in Wichita, Kansas.
Weinstein died on June 15, 2021 in Great Neck, New York at the age of 99.
Alfred Goodwin
Alfred Theodore Goodwin (born June 29, 1923) is an American judge. He is the Senior Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. Goodwin was born in Bellingham, Washington. Goodwin was in the Ninth Circuit from 1971 to 1991 after being nominated by President Richard Nixon.
William Joseph Nealon Jr.
William Joseph Nealon Jr. (July 31, 1923 – August 30, 2018) was an American jurist. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Nealon Jr. was United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. He was the last judicial appointee from the Kennedy administration. He was on the court from 1962 to 1989.
Nealon Jr. was the longest-serving current federal judge at his death. On August 28, 2018, he became the longest serving federal district judge in history, two days before his death.
Nealon Jr. died in Scranton on August 30, 2018 from pneumonia at the age of 95.
Dana G. Mead