Sunday, May 27, 2007

Who chooses the names?

There was a thread recently on Chinesepod about students' Chinese names - usually students get Chinese names from their teachers or friends, based on a phonetic transliteration of their own Western names. For example my own is bu lan deng (布兰登). On that thread I asked a question which didn't find an answer: For famous Westerners (actors, politicians etc.), who chooses their Chinese names so that they are consistently used across newspapers and TV for example?

Given the subtle play on words and symbols that Chinese appears to offer, there's sure room for fun or failure.

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