Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/Archive 7

message: We need Chinese language help at Chinese wine.  There's a wine which isn't yet discussed that is sold as "hung-lu" wine.  It is reddish in color, a sharp smell, and a chemically, diesel-like taste, and is sold by the Oriental Mascot brand (which also makes mijiu and formerly also made Shaoxing jiu).  The largest photo of this wine is here, but the characters aren't easily readable.  I think "hung-lu" isn't Hanyu pinyin.  Can someone provide information about this wine, the characters, etc.?  Thank you!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0000DJZ0F/ref=dp_primary-product-display_0/102-4042702-9901704?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=3370831&s=gourmet-food  Badagnani 19:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The pin-yin would be honglu or hong lu. Red dew. It is red when bottled but the color changes to more of a brown color as it ages. It is used for cooking wine.  Google for hong lu wine and you'll find lots of (sales) information. P0M 03:54, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Hung-lu wine" question 

message: A heated discussion has erupted at Zhang Ziyi talk page over explaining the meaning of the surname at people pages.  User Lao Wai insisted it should be done, user Mandel says the proper place is at Zhang (surname).  To demostrate how ridiculous it is, Mandel placed such surname definitions at Hu Jintao, Mao Zedong and Bruce Lee. Please discuss here or at talk page Zhang Ziyi whether you support or disapprove of such definitions. Mandel 16:07, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Explaining surnames in [[Zhang Ziyi]]

message: The status of the various the various spoken varieties of Chinese is disputed. They are often regarded as dialects of each other, but they satisfy the criteria of being seperate languages by most standards, including the lingustic ones of mutual intelligibility, and differences in grammar, phonology, and vocabulary. Due to their differences, and the linguistic classifications, and for practical reasons, the seperate varieties should be de facto treated as seperate languages, for the purposes of classification, listing, categorization, and terminology. 
*Thus, in lists or categories such as "Number of speakers by language" or "Films by language", it is appropriate to list these varieties seperately. 
*Top level divisions of Chinese (Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Hakka, Min, etc) should be listed seperately as top-level languages in lists or categories by language. 
*When describing loanwords, terms, placenames, or personal names, it can be appropriate to include the names, characters, and/or romanizations from the originating language or dialect. Including the Shanghainese term would be appropriate for a placename in Shanghai or a Shanghainese dish; including the Taiwanese names for the same would not. 
Nonetheless, despite their status, linguistic classifications do not necessarilly correspond with traditional Chinese classification of these varieties, and viewing all these as part of a single language is an an important part of the linguistic and cultural self-identity of many Chinese. Therefore, for NPOV purposes, avoid explicitly naming them as either languages or dialects. Simply use the name itself if there is no ambiguity. If there is, then use "xxx (linguistics)" if there's dispute over whether to call it a language or dialect — this includes all the first-level divisions, the second-level divisions of Min, and Taiwanese. Use "xxx dialect" otherwise:
    * Mandarin (linguistics) (北方话)
    * Standard Mandarin (普通话/國語)
    * Cantonese (linguistics) (粤語)
    * Min Nan (閩南語)
    * Taiwanese (linguistics) (台語)
In such articles, mention should be made of the language/dialect controversy. The issues over identification of the varieties of Chinese should be mentioned in the first-level divisions.  --Yuje 19:32, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Language/dialect NPOV

message: So just to get an idea of the amount of support for adding the above text to the Chinese naming conventions, I'd like to conduct an informal vote to gauge the amount of concensus. Just state support, oppose, abstain, etc and please comment or suggest revisions
Support
*As per my position above. --Yuje 19:32, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Vote

message: Several ROC-era companies in Guangdong (most notably Chinese medicine manafacturers) were split into two after 1949-- the families who owned the companies fled to Hong Kong and continued their business there, while in PRC the original business was nationalized.
I was instructed to write three articles in the case of that: one for the pre-1949 company and one for both progenies. It's the naming of the pre-1949 entity that posed a problem: We should use pinyin(currently the name of the PRC progeny) or Cantonese(the name of the Hong Kong progeny)?
To help with the question, the two companies engaged into massive trademark war overseas and generally the PRC progeny is limited to trade with that name within the PRC. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Samuel Curtis (talk • contribs) 04:52, May 3, 2006 (UTC).
:In that case they're now two companies, the original business in mainland China was not continued to be operated by the family members, and the assets were taken over by the PRC government, am I right? IMHO, create an article for each of the two companies, mention about the shared pre-1949 history under  the article for the one carried on by the family, with a link to that section on their shared history from the another article. — Instantnood 17:44, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a special case where in the PRC the company was nationalized but is still ran by one of the branch of the family. In that case, what to do? Samuel Curtis 18:02, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do the companies treat the other parts as just different parts of the same company, or do they demand that they are the only "true" company with that name?  It's not uncommon to have companies with the same name in multiple places, related to each other or not.  If they treat each other as just different branches, then figure out if there is a relationship and maybe you can write just one article, this is not that uncommon.  You might find they have one holding company and each company is actually a legal subsidiary.  If they are different, then just use standard Wikipedia:Disambiguation tactics. SchmuckyTheCat 18:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Samuel Curtis actually wants to know how the pre-1949 history can be dealt with, and which name (Pinyin or Cantonese) to use. If their pre-1949 history is included in the article of either one of them, but only linked from the other, it already implies which is the legitimate one, and is subject to different points of view. I've to say it's a difficult matter to deal with. — Instantnood 20:14, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Answering SchmuckyTheCat: The Hong Kong companies always claim they are the only legitimate company, but the PRC companies are usually quiet on this issue.Samuel Curtis 03:46, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm inclined to say that one should attempt to determine whether the business in question did its business before 1949 exclusively or almost exclusively in Cantonese. If so, use the Cantonese name. Otherwise, Standard Mandarin was already the national standard under the ROC, so use that. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 04:17, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You mean, use Wades-Glides? Samuel Curtis 15:20, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Now I have thought about it; the business law at that time in ROC (even now in PRC) does not require companies to have a name written in Roman characters, and, aaccording to my knowledge, companies are free to use any romanization, if not another Chinese language of their choice. It is still possible that before 1949 the Latin alphabet name of the entities would be in Cantonese in this case. Samuel Curtis 14:22, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm, Wade-Giles would be an interesting possibility, but what I meant was just to use the guoyu name, which would, of course, be transliterated into Roman letters somehow, and I had presumed (without really thinking about it) that that would be pinyin. Now, if the company, in fact, had one registered or otherwise official or common roman-letters name, I think you should use that. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 17:00, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: True. There're still Kweichow Moutai, Tsingtao Beer, Tsinghua University, Peking University.. even after some thirty years Pinyin was designated the official standard of transcription into roman letters by the PRC and by the UN. It really depends on under what name the company trades and traded as. — Instantnood 19:28, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What if this name is also the name of one of the progenies? Samuel Curtis 15:49, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

text: (response to user:Samuel Curtis' message at 03:46, May 6) If it's true for the companies you're going to write on, use the names the Hong Kong companies are using. The PRC ones can perhaps be considered new but related companies. — Instantnood 09:51, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Now I have thought of, in most cases the PRC companies claimed themselves legitimate — based on ideological grounds — before around 1970s, then they no longer claim they are the "one and only" successor of the company, even by trademark laws they have the monopoly of that name in the PRC. There are always exceptions; one of these companies in the PRC got a license from the Hong Kong company to use the mark overseas. Samuel Curtis 15:20, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. There's no general rule of thumb. — Instantnood 19:28, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A company naming question 

message: There is a related question. I was looking up the Xi'an Incident, which uses only Pinyin (except for Chiang Kai-shek). Since the article reads like it has been babel-fished, this may not represent anyone's decision. 
Nevertheless, this is fairly inconvenient. There are several contemporary discussions of this; none of them (of course) use Pinyin. Most use Post-Office or Wade-Giles, and the English reader, whom we are trying to serve, will have trouble recognizing the names involved. Should there be a policy to change the Romanization in such cases, which would apply strictly to pre-1950 subjects? Septentrionalis 19:49, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I myself prefer using the old names for all pre-PRC matters. To those who're proficient in Chinese it might simply be a change of transcription, to most English speakers it is a name change, like Calcutta to Kolkata. We may say, for example, " the Republic of China government moved to Chungking (now Chongqing), after Nanking (now Nanjing) fell to Japanese control in 1937 ".  But this may involve modifying the existing policy, and will need consensus to do so. — Instantnood 20:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think a change in romanization should not be made to look like a name change. If both romanizations have to be used, it should be "Chungking (Pinyin: Chongqing)" or something similar, to distinguish it from the situation of "Beijing (then called Peip'ing)". Kusma (討論) 22:16, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems reasonable. Do that at first mention, and then continue. Septentrionalis 23:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Pinyin without tone marks are not really Pinyin. Is  " the Republic of China government moved to Chungking (Chongqing), after Nanking (Nanjing) fell to Japanese control in 1937. " more acceptable? — Instantnood 20:16, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Pinyin is now universally used. There's no need to confuse people with multiple names for different contexts. Historians now (not historians 30 years ago) almost always use pinyin, except for certain exceptions such as Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen. I say we use pinyin except in the case of proper names where whichever system was official used by the entity should be used. Instantnood's suggestion is misleading because it makes it seem like there was a name change when there was none.--Jiang 01:16, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I find it weird to see the English names of these places in texts about history spelt in the modern way. We cannot rewrite history by replacing everything with modern names. Pinyin has only been used widely for around a decade or two, and not yet, until this moment, truly universally. — Instantnood 20:16, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the convention used by journalists and historians, even when speaking of historical topics. Of course they're plenty of books using Wade-Giles, but none are published recently. How many history books written recently can you find that do not use pinyin? Wikipedia should follow established conventions, not create them. I can't think of a single publication that varies the romanization of places to suit contexts.--Jiang 00:42, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is this the convention? (assuming it is) Using the old names is different from varying romanisations to suit contexts. We have to use the names that were used in English by then. (Nevertheless the way the <Span class=plainlinks>Mother Teresa of Calcutta   article</span> is written is unsatisfactory. She died in 1997, whereas the name change took place in 2001.) — Instantnood 19:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

text: *Frankly, I am more concerned about the names of people than places. It is probably still true that the warlord of Manchuria has been more often spelled Chang Tso-lin than Zhang Zuolin (because he's not written about much nowadays). It will be difficult for the English reader to follow up on this article if it's only in pinyin. Septentrionalis 23:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Redirects are cheap. SchmuckyTheCat 00:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how this is soluble by redirects; I'm not discussing the placement of Xi'an Incident, but its text. Septentrionalis 03:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, the ambiguity comes with people names (e.g. Zhang Xueliang), not place names (e.g. Beijing). I don't know of a solution for this. --Jiang 00:42, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Another trouble are the names of historical events that involve the ROC, such as the Xinhai Revolution, which the ROC government calls it 1911 Revolution or Hsin-hai Revolution in English. — Instantnood 19:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Historical articles

message: -is there anyone who wish to say "im not chinese" im "zhongguonese"?  in general we follow conventions when writing different names. the word "China" itself is a perfect example of this, generally, in english once a name is accepted, it tend to stick forever. "Mr jaeger"  "Ms Koenig"  "the rhine" "the hague" "gypsies" "japan" 
etc.   
personally, being a seperatist myself, i would prefer to not use pinyin when speaking about matters outside mainland china. as using pinying would signify a kind of submission to communist politics.  of course, people from a different political point of view would object to this for obvious reasons, they would like nothing less than half of asia shouting in unison "we are all chinese".  and when such goal is not realized, they revert to the old tradition stemming from the founding of the chin dynasty, burn all the books and burry all the scholars alive. (or delete wiki articles, and ban wikipedians in this case)
but politics aside, the group of people who would idtentify themselves as the "sons of dragons" or "sons of the emperor huang" (a politically neutral term imo) are notoriously over-inclusive when using the term "chinese", in "casual speech" when one isnt actively trying to demonstrate one's political standing by one's choice of words, the word chinese (people) often include people who's grandfather's grandfather moved to thailand 200 years ago, or citizens of singapore who cant write their own names in kanji.  and in casual speech, the consensus is that all non-mandarin accents/language/dialects are considered "secondary". (of course, this "consensus" changes greatly when one start to talk about politics, for example, pro-indepent taiwanese politicians tend to speak of republic of taiwan with taiwanese as the official language, even though the word refering to "mandarin chinese" in taiwanese is literally translated as "national language"
so.. in light of the political situation, i suggest we have a hierachy of names:  traditional english names comes first (if there is one) -> followed by whatever convention that the people immediately associated with the articles prefer (eg. if chao yum fat introduce himself in english as "im yum fat" we shouldnt use his mandarin "run fa" as primary name) (it's not too perposterous to suggest that ppl can decide what their own name is, is it?] this should be followed by the standard of whatever political body that is most closely associated with the article, followed by other variations.
:This issue is similar to the debate on "US" vs. "British" spelling in wikipedia. There are more than one way to write these names, but there is only one article.  You have to do it one way or the other.  With help of redirects, all variations of the topic title can be easily handled.  But the content should be consistent at least within the article if not across wikipedia.  Like the edit wars between British and US spellers, you cannot please everyone either way.  Instead of listing all possible spellings within the article, perhaps wikidictionary entries should be created to list the spelling variations.  Which spelling system should be picked for the article content?  A set of strict and comprehensive guidelines should be developed independent of any political agenda. We should not shy away from pinyin because Taiwanese people hate PRC. Once a spelling system has been decided, it should be noted in the article, so that edit war can be cut down to minimium.  Many terminologies have entered the English language and have become English words, they should not be replaced with new spelling, e.g. China, tofu, bokchoy etc.  Official spellings such as Tung Chee Hua should not be altered either. Spellings native to the topic should be used, e.g. Dimsum was introduced to the English language via Cantonese, which is not equivalent to the generic Chinese "dianxin", so it would be a mistake to spell it in pinyin. Another example is wok which is already a English word via Cantonese pronunciation, how it is called in pinyin is irrelavent.  For other terminologies (including new or historical topics) that are not already in the English language (look up a English dictionary as a litmus test), I would vote for pinyin because it is more widely used and English speakers can pronounced the spellings closer to the Mandarin originals than Wade-Giles can with or without the tone marks. To assist cross reference to older publications, the Wade-Giles spellings can be put in parenthesis or link to a wikidictionary entry. Kowloonese 18:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps that is true for zh.wikipedia.com, but we are talking about the conventions used in en.wikipedia.com and I don't think the same rules need to apply. Let them fight in the zh version and leave the political agenda off the en version, this version is supposed to be NPOV. Kowloonese 18:04, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Naming proposal

message: The current section on the use of apostrophes in pinyin handles the question as if it were just a matter of personal preference without any clear rules, with sentences like "some people apply the apostrophe in these cases nevertheless, for the sake of clarity" and "the second rule is not a strict rule, so you might want to do a google test to determine which usage is more popular". Are there really no hard-and-fast rules about this? I have found that the site pinyin.info has an article on the use of apostrophes where the rules are set out in a very clear fashion. The rules in that website seem to come from the book Chinese Romanization. Pronunciation and Orthography (汉语拼音和正词法), by Yin Binyong and Mary Felley, and published by Sinolingua (Beijing) in 1990. This book is also the main reference in the Wikipedia article about the pinyin system, so I suppose it can be regarded as a valid authority on the matter, certainly more so than the recommendations of The US Library of Congress. The rules according to pinyin.info are extremely concise and simple: "Put an apostrophe before any syllable that begins with a, e, or o, unless that syllable comes at the beginning of a word or immediately follows a hyphen or other dash". Following this, Tian'anmen would indeed be spelled with an apostrophe even if it could be argued that no ambiguity exists (there is no tia syllable in pinyin). On the other hand, cases like Zhàngāng or Fǎngǎn, currently cited in the apostrophes section as Zhàn'gāng or Fǎn'gǎn would have no apostrophe, which seems correct if we think about place names like Henan or Jinan, which are never spelled as He'nan or Ji'nan. Unless there were any good reasons not to trust the description of the rules given at pinyin.info, I think we should rewrite the apostrophes section so that it cites that simple rule, followed by some better examples. --AngelRiesgo 19:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a copy of that book, though not on me at the moment so I can't tell you what it says about the apostrophe in pinyin. That rule doesn't seem to completely accurate, as shown by your example. I suspect Henan or Tiananmen are written like that just because they are well known words although Tiananmen written as Tian'anmen seems to be fairly common. LDHan 20:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, my impression is that Tian'anmen, like Xi'an, is fairly common because it is the correct spelling, as sanctioned by the PRC. And that's why I think the pinyin.info rules make sense, because they help to explain clearly and without ambiguity the common cases in which apostrophes are regularly used. The article at pinyin.info is also critical of the Library of Congress recommendations, which seem to be wrong. --AngelRiesgo 20:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apostrophes 

message: Wikipedia:Naming_conventions states that, "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize", i.e. the name most used in the English-speaking world.  A large percentage of English speakers live in countries where Cantonese is the dominant Chinese dialect (USA, GB, Canada etc).  Therefore, Chinese entities such as food and drink, which an English speaker is most likely to encounter in his home country, should generally be romanized according to Cantonese pronounciation. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.68.82.115 (talk • contribs) 06:54, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romanize using the dialect an English speaker is most likely to come across 

message: User:Bonafide.hustla has repeated inserted the following sentence:
One important subtle point: Wikipedia treats the Republic of China as a sovereign state with equal status with the People's Republic of China, yet does not address whether they are considered separate nations. 
Here are my reasons for reverting this change:
1. This is not the correct forum for this argument. This page is titled Naming conventions (Chinese). As such, it details the conventions of naming China-related matters on Wikipedia. Your contribution is a comment on this page and other related policies and conventions of Wikipedia. If you have a comment to make, please make it here, on a Talk page, rather than on the article page.
2. Inaccuracy. The comment above contains a number of inaccuracies which are not backed up by examples or sources. For example:
* Wikipedia treats... - Is this a reference to Wikipedia policies? or conventions? If the latter, then...
* sovereign state - Nowhere in the naming conventions, nor indeed in the relevant articles, is the sovereignty of the Republic of China, nor, indeed, the People's Republic of China, specified. In both articles, and in articles such as China and the political status of Taiwan, the sovereignty or lack thereof of either state, and whether sovereignty is internal, external, recognised, de jure, divided, or indivisible, is not specified and is indeed left to the reader to decide for his or herself. To state that "Wikipedia treats the ROC as a sovereign state" is therefore contrary to the reality of the practice on Wikipedia.
* equal status - Similarly to above, please show where the ROC is specified as being equal in status with the People's Republic of China. Given its rather unequal status in the United Nations and other world bodies, it would be rather outrageous indeed if Wikipedia did treat them as being "equal in status". 
Due to these two reasons I have removed the sentence concerned from this article.
If you believe that my reasoning is erroneous, please reply below. If you would like to address the perceived inadequacies of the Naming conventions, please discuss below. Thanks. --Sumple (Talk) 06:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: [], who claimed there was no change in the policy in the removal of this sentence. The removal was without consensus, not to mention  a strong suspicion of personal point of view by the above user. The sentence was present from originally by Shou on January 22, 2004 [] and was there without dispute until Jiang's removal on May 20, 2005. I do not know why the edit warring user has a problem with the sentence and he refuse to communicate, simply labelling others edits as POV pushing with no thorough explanations. Despite Yuje's explanation [], he continue to revert war. Eventually causing the page protection to occur. I'm not gonna revert back to the NPoV version, but if any of you think my explanation makes sense, please revert it. If you don't, contact me and I'll present a more thorogh explanation. Peace out--Bonafide.hustla 07:14, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I was not aware of the history of that sentence. Nonetheless, my point regarding the NPOV issues of the sentence remains. We don't do sovereignty! --Sumple (Talk) 07:13, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Please show falsity in "Sumple falsely assume that the official wikipedia policy is... " --Sumple (Talk) 07:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent addition by [[User:Bonafide.hustla]] 

message: I have intiated a discussion on Talk:Postal System Pinyin whether this page should be moved to "Chinese postal spelling system" or any other more appropriate English name. I feel that "pinyin" is both inaccurate and anachronistic, but I want to discuss this before I make any changes.--Niohe 17:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Postal System Pinyin? 

message: Is there a Wikipedia convention, de facto or de jure, for Chinese street names?  At Wikitravel, we're currently using this rule:
 Write syllables words together and in lowercase.  Split up long strings into sensible chunks.
 南大街 is Nándàjiē (South-Great-Street), not "Nan Da Jie" or "NanDaJie"
 天河北路 is Tiānhé Běilù (Heaven-Lake North-Road)
But I was hoping there would be a clearer way of expressing this. Jpatokal 08:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming convention for streets? 

message: Could be useful, and articles lacking chinese characters could be found in :Category:Lacking Chinese text. Yao Ziyuan 06:27, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent!  This will allow, now, editors with Chinese language skill to go through and add the hanzi for these articles.  Thanks for your thoughtful improvements to Chinese articles.  Badagnani 06:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{tl|needhanzi}} 

message: could be used for most  jobs in this single template. Yao Ziyuan 14:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, interesting idea.  I never thought of having all the languages in a single template.  Badagnani 19:40, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

text: The only thing is that the way I've seen you use it, the non-Chinese romanizations (i.e. Korean, Japanese) aren't given, and the pinyin is given before the template rather than within it.  Badagnani 01:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{tl|CJKV}} 

message: New templates for conversion of Julian day to Chinese calendar, now support from 4 AD upto 2044.  could be used for conversion from Gregorian calendar to Julian day. For example, today is 年月日 in Chinese calendar. Yao Ziyuan 15:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{tl|Chinese calendar}}