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In case you're wondering it's 表妹. Also, in case you're wondering why it's not symmetrical (mother's siblings vs father's sisters) is because the complementary

In case you're wondering it's 表妹. Also, in case you're wondering why it's not symmetrical (mother's siblings vs father's sisters) is because the complementary set is 堂妹 (younger father's bothers' daughter), and your 堂妹's family name is the same as you. 堂妹's literal translation is "younger sisters living in the same hall" make makes sense when considering how people live together back in the days. 表妹's literal translation is "remote/distant/foreign younger sisters" which you might see them less often in the old days.

vesinisa 5y ago
Hmm, it might have made more sense to just use the Latin approximations for the Mandarin pronunication of those Chinese ideograms here. So e.g. CNLabelContactRelationBiaoMei.
- namelosw 5y ago
  I agree, just like exotic words that are wildly accepted (eg. Umami, Zen), they're handy. Though, people might not know the word Biaomei at all and get confused by the codebase: people know the word "Umami" because Japanese food is popular; people know the word "Mujahideen" because they come from political events and news. I wonder what would lead them to Biaomei...
  - skissane 5y ago
    If I was writing this code, I would have put something like this in the doc comment: > The label for the familial relationship expressed by the Mandarin term biao mei, meaning the contact's mother’s sibling’s younger daughter or the contact's father’s sister’s younger daughter. This label variable will also store the name for that concept in Chinese language varieties other than Mandarin. If the identical concept is found in a non-Chinese culture, this label variable will store the name for that concept in the language of that culture. If they looked up "CNLabelContactRelationBiaoMei" in the documentation and saw the above description, I don't think anyone would be confused.

vesinisa 5y ago

Hmm, it might have made more sense to just use the Latin approximations for the Mandarin pronunication of those Chinese ideograms here. So e.g. CNLabelContactRelationBiaoMei.

namelosw 5y ago
I agree, just like exotic words that are wildly accepted (eg. Umami, Zen), they're handy. Though, people might not know the word Biaomei at all and get confused by the codebase: people know the word "Umami" because Japanese food is popular; people know the word "Mujahideen" because they come from political events and news. I wonder what would lead them to Biaomei...
- skissane 5y ago
  If I was writing this code, I would have put something like this in the doc comment: > The label for the familial relationship expressed by the Mandarin term biao mei, meaning the contact's mother’s sibling’s younger daughter or the contact's father’s sister’s younger daughter. This label variable will also store the name for that concept in Chinese language varieties other than Mandarin. If the identical concept is found in a non-Chinese culture, this label variable will store the name for that concept in the language of that culture. If they looked up "CNLabelContactRelationBiaoMei" in the documentation and saw the above description, I don't think anyone would be confused.