Re: Chinese forced to change their name hanzi

From: Andrew West (andrewcwest@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Apr 21 2009 - 16:24:14 CDT

  • Next message: John H. Jenkins: "Re: Chinese forced to change their name hanzi"

    2009/4/21 Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <asmodai@in-nomine.org>:
    >
    > Encountered this article
    > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/world/asia/21china.html where it details
    > how a Chinese woman is requested to change her name of 马骋(騁) to something
    > else because "[t]he bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only
    > 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006
    > government report."

    BTW, this is a typical example of unreasonable and illogical
    China-bashing. I just wonder if the UK or US governments would allow
    me to register my name as "Anꝺrew Ƿest" -- I suspect that I would find
    that the governement's computers are programmed to read only 52 or so
    of the roughly 1,202 currently encoded Latin letters -- a far worse
    result than the Chinese governement computers.

    Likewise, when a Chinese couple is not allowed to name their child @
    this is construed by the press as an ourageous violation of human
    rights by the repressive Chinese governement. And yet they don't stop
    to ask whether their governements would allow a child to be named @ or
    not.

    Andrew

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