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Re: Regarding call Chinese names

2013-07-11 10:23:56
On 11-Jul-13 08:58, Simon Perreault wrote:
I have a question: I think I've seen Chinese names written in both
orders. That is, sometimes "Hui Deng" will be written "Deng Hui". Am
I right? Does this happen often? What is the most common order? Is
there a way to guess what order a name is written in? Sometimes it's
not easy for non-Sinophones to know which part is the given name and
which part is the family name.

It is more common for the given name to come first when written in
Pinyin, following the rule for other languages written in Latin
characters, but exceptions are frequent enough that one can't rely on
it.  A useful and growing convention is to write the family name in all
caps.  Using the above example, if "Deng" were the family name, you
might see:

Hui DENG
or
DENG Hui

whereas if "Hui" were the family name, you might see:

Deng HUI
or
HUI Deng

Also, most family names have a single syllable; all of the top 100 are,
which accounts for 85% of the population of China.  So, if exactly one
of the names has multiple syllables, it is reasonably safe to assume
that is the given name, absent a more definitive clue.

S

-- 
Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

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