4 ms·

Most Chinese surnames are ancient, but their romanizations are not: * Names with the same pronunciation (homonyms) will probably end up with the same romanizat

by samus 5y ago

Most Chinese surnames are ancient, but their romanizations are not: * Names with the same pronunciation (homonyms) will probably end up with the same romanization. No romanization system has ever completely solved this problem, except by assigning arbitrary spelling differences. * People will probably tell authorities the pronunciation of their name in their native language (Mandarin/northern dialects, Cantonese, Hakka etc.), which creates different-sounding versions of the same name. Worse, these romanizations are far from unified and don't correspond to the standardized romanization systems. Familiar example: Lee for the name 李 (Pinyin: Lǐ) and its homonyms. * There are multiple romanization systems in use, which also yield different versions of a name, even if they all sound the same. A familiar example is Mao Zedong, whose name is Mao Tse-tung according to the Wade-Giles system, from before Pinyin romanizations of names became commonplace. For Cantonese names, a dizzying amount of romanization systems exist. All of these render any surveys about Chinese names in the Diaspora extremely difficult, and most statistics completely garbage. For some families it might be impossible to recover the actual surname.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
None of that is relevant here - every effect you list (well, not the first one) tends to increase the perceived variety of Chinese surnames, while the observation we're explaining is a lack of variety. That lack of observed variety is due to an actual lack of variety which your effects have failed to mask. And that actual lack of variety is due to the age of the system.
- samus 5y ago
  If your point is the age: most of these names are ancient and can be traced to earlier that the first millenium BC. This is long enough that names can actually start to die out. Also, family names carry great significance in East Asian cultures*. They can carry great prestige, but also infamy. People often changed family names to become less associated with disgraced people. Emperors awarded their surname to loyal and meritous commoners, and these in turn gave it to their followers. Sometimes, whole populations adopted them. This happened to the Li (李), Chen (陳) and Wang (王) surnames. It's true though that there are actually not that many to begin with. It's just a quite restricted set of words, and because of the writing system there is no variety because of spelling differences. Most surnames are only one character long, and the really long ones are mostly transliteration of non-Han surnames. Also, many non-Han populations were assigned a common surname when they became sinicized. *: Western family names are mostly rooted in patronymics, place names, professions or adjectives.

by samus 5y ago

thaumasiotes 5y ago

None of that is relevant here - every effect you list (well, not the first one) tends to increase the perceived variety of Chinese surnames, while the observation we're explaining is a lack of variety. That lack of observed variety is due to an actual lack of variety which your effects have failed to mask. And that actual lack of variety is due to the age of the system.

samus 5y ago
If your point is the age: most of these names are ancient and can be traced to earlier that the first millenium BC. This is long enough that names can actually start to die out. Also, family names carry great significance in East Asian cultures*. They can carry great prestige, but also infamy. People often changed family names to become less associated with disgraced people. Emperors awarded their surname to loyal and meritous commoners, and these in turn gave it to their followers. Sometimes, whole populations adopted them. This happened to the Li (李), Chen (陳) and Wang (王) surnames. It's true though that there are actually not that many to begin with. It's just a quite restricted set of words, and because of the writing system there is no variety because of spelling differences. Most surnames are only one character long, and the really long ones are mostly transliteration of non-Han surnames. Also, many non-Han populations were assigned a common surname when they became sinicized. *: Western family names are mostly rooted in patronymics, place names, professions or adjectives.