page_title: Shih Tzu
section_title: Etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Shih Tzu / Etymology
caption_attribution_description: Shih Tzu dog, name: Fibi (female), 1,5 years old on photo
context_page_description: The Shih Tzu is a toy dog breed, weighing from 4 to 7.25 kilograms when fully grown. The breed was developed in Tibet.
context_section_description: The name comes from the Chinese language word for "lion" because this kind of dog was bred to resemble "the lion, as depicted in traditional oriental art". (The Pekingese breed is also called "lion dog" in Chinese.) "Shih Tzu" is the Wade-Giles romanization of the Chinese characters 獅子, meaning lion; this romanization scheme was in use when the breed was first introduced in America. In contemporary China, Pinyin is the predominant system of romanization, which renders it as shīzi. The Mandarin Chinese pronunciation is approximately SHIRR-dzə. Though the Wade-Giles system is often regarded as less intuitive, "Shih Tzu" is a useful linguistic example of both of two cases where the Wade-Giles scheme reflects the use of a syllabic fricative after a corresponding consonant cluster (retroflexes and sibilants) in modern Mandarin. This is a unique phonological feature that does not appear in any other known modern language in their standardized form. Indeed, though the exact classification is still debated (and dialectal variants exist), linguists generally agree that these sounds cannot be represented by conventional symbols in the IPA; hence an unorthodox approximation "SHIRR" was used earlier in this paragraph. However, the use of a syllabic fricative is often observed in informal English with the paralinguistic expression "Shh!", which may serve as a guide to the pronunciation of "Shih".
  In the modern Chinese language, the Shih Tzu is generally known as the "Xi Shi dog"; Xi Shi was regarded as one of the most beautiful women of ancient China. The alternative name was adopted to avoid the confusion that stems from referring to the breed as a lion. Shih Tzu were nicknamed the Chrysanthemum Dog in England in the 1930s. The dog may also be called the Tibetan Lion Dog, but whether the breed should be referred to as "Tibetan" or "Chinese" is a source of both historical and political contention, as the subsequent section notes. A book on the breed states that "dog historians tend to have very strong opinions" on the subject.
caption: A female Shih Tzu at around 18 months of age.
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