3 ms·

Or we could follow Shakespeare's lead and not worry about spelling too much. Plenty of named also get anglicized into slightly different or multiple spellings.

Or we could follow Shakespeare's lead and not worry about spelling too much. Plenty of named also get anglicized into slightly different or multiple spellings. Are those Chinese people called Wang or Wong?

koolba 5y ago
Either way, sometimes it’s going to be Wong.
Invictus0 5y ago
When the word is someone's name the spelling should be respected.
- red369 5y ago
  I agree, but I think the point regarding Shakespeare's spelling was probably referring to the way he may have spelled his own name differently at different times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_Shakespeare%27s_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_Shakespeare%27s_na...
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    Not just his own name, nobody at that time could spell English consistently. Which might have had something to do with not even being able to read or write. People's names are fundamentally oral and spelling is just an encoding to communicate them in writing. Being worried about spelling correctness it like being worried about the choice of binary encoding of the spelling. My name is only correctly encoded in binary as ASCII, not some bastardized similar-looking unicode codepoints, and certainly not that archaic IBM encoding! Future generations had better respect my preference! /s
Razengan 5y ago
how long is a chinese name
- exporectomy 5y ago
  We're both going to get in trouble for this but Hu was the president of china in the 2000s?
  - Razengan 5y ago
    We chose this path
nayuki 5y ago
Wang in Mandarin, Wong in Cantonese. There is a difference.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  It's the same character in both dialects. I don't think a particular romanization counts as somebody's language when plenty of native speakers can't even read or write it. If you want to respect spellings, we should write all Chinese names in Chinese characters, but we don't because we don't respect them enough to actually bother with effort.

koolba 5y ago

Either way, sometimes it’s going to be Wong.

Invictus0 5y ago

When the word is someone's name the spelling should be respected.

red369 5y ago
I agree, but I think the point regarding Shakespeare's spelling was probably referring to the way he may have spelled his own name differently at different times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_Shakespeare%27s_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_Shakespeare%27s_na...
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Not just his own name, nobody at that time could spell English consistently. Which might have had something to do with not even being able to read or write. People's names are fundamentally oral and spelling is just an encoding to communicate them in writing. Being worried about spelling correctness it like being worried about the choice of binary encoding of the spelling. My name is only correctly encoded in binary as ASCII, not some bastardized similar-looking unicode codepoints, and certainly not that archaic IBM encoding! Future generations had better respect my preference! /s

Razengan 5y ago

how long is a chinese name

exporectomy 5y ago
We're both going to get in trouble for this but Hu was the president of china in the 2000s?
- Razengan 5y ago
  We chose this path

nayuki 5y ago

Wang in Mandarin, Wong in Cantonese. There is a difference.

exporectomy 5y ago
It's the same character in both dialects. I don't think a particular romanization counts as somebody's language when plenty of native speakers can't even read or write it. If you want to respect spellings, we should write all Chinese names in Chinese characters, but we don't because we don't respect them enough to actually bother with effort.