Pinyinize me silly

Listening to: E Pari Ra – Kiri Te Kanawa – Maori Songs

This is an odd rant.

I spent some time tonight looking at (some are positively unreadable) some local blogs, and I realised why when the younger (under 25) bloggers mention their friends, if they didn’t assign a code name, did not sit well with me.

If the persons described in the blogs, or the blogger themselves didn’t have Christian or first names, they tended to be Pinyinised. All thanks to the government’s policy in the late 70s to pinyinize anything they could lay their hands on. Take the suburb/localities with Chinese names for instance. If I’m not wrong, Bishan was once Peck Sua, Funan was Hock Lam, Hougang was Aw Kang.

I understand this as part of the policy of homogenizing the local Chinese population. They banned dialects other than Mandarin in all broadcasts then, and promoted the use of Mandarin in all walks of Chinese life. Apart from befuddling the non-Chinese population (or perhaps, infuriating some of them, that their tax money was being used to subsidize a language not their own), I can see that it’s had immense success. Parents started giving their children official pinyinised names instead of phonetically translated names based on whichever Chinese dialect group they belonged to. I remember one year in primary school, the teachers suddenly told us we had to change our names on the register. It was all well with me, seeing as my surname started with the same letter whether or not you pinyinised it. But many ‘Chias’ and ‘Cheahs’ were upset they were put at the end of the roll as ‘Xie’, as were ‘Chows’ who became ‘Zhous’.

I couldn’t find any statistics on dialect group breakdown in Singapore though, but for mine, pinyinization takes away the texture that is, that should be, multi-culturalism. I once had an Identity Card that listed my dialect group. A friend tells me that apparently this was to aid the police in a sort of ethnic profiling. E.g. If you were Hokkien, you were likely to be a gang member; a Hainanese, chef; a Hakka, Prime Minister, and so on.

The problem with pinyinization it is extremely difficult for the non-Chinese and those not familiar with the rules of pinyin romanization to actually pronounce the pinyin names. Dialect names are alright, because it was the British colonial civil service that started phonetically translating the many Chinese names. I think several eminent Chinese people would lose a lot of oomph from their names if they were pinyinized: Li Guangyao? Doesn’t matter if the old phonetic translation was inaccurate (Wade-Giles worked only for Mandarin), some names just sound grander and more ‘real’ in their dialect. I like Whampoa, not Huangpu.

When I attended secondary school at ACS (where it wuz cool to suck at Mandarin), the school masters had to ‘officially’ follow ministerial directives to use Pinyin names for the Chinese population, but largely left our names alone apart from school publications and exam booklets. It was ridiculous. The Malay and Indian boys didn’t have to go through this renaming exercise, and neither did the teachers. It didn’t work all that well at ACS because a large number of boys had Anglo-Celtic-Judaic names before their surnames, which were used in place of Chinese names anyway.

Thing is, when you see a dialect name, and are familiar with dialects, you’ll know upon looking which dialect group the person belongs to. Lam and Foong are Cantonese, Hong is Hokkien, Jee is Hainanese. Try it.

Pinyin takes the fun out of this, unless you like struggling with pronounciation. Try this for a spittle-inducing mouthful: Xie Zhongzi, or even Zhang Ziyi. If you don’t know pinyin (or Zhang Ziyi), you’ll get it so wrong.

There was this one classmate who was unfortunate enough to have only a dialect name, and one that sounded funny both in his dialect and in pinyin. Low Ho Ho in Hokkien and on his birth certificate, and Liu Hehe in pinyin. First day of school was a procession of subject teachers chuckling and asking which he’d prefer, Hoho or Hehe?

I also remember this girl whose name was Lily Lee Li Li, pinyinised to Li Lili. Wonder what’s happened to her. Maybe her tongue flapped her to death when she was introducing herself one day.

And of course, there’s this one professor who seems clueless about the hilarity of her name. (It’s a Cantonese name apparently, meaning snow something). Now, that one needs to be pinyinized.

Stay tuned for ‘Funky Hong Kong names’, sometime soon…

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28 responses to “Pinyinize me silly”

  1. Little Miss Drinkalot Avatar

    I think they introduced the pinyin system when I entered Primary One, so it was a very smooth transition for me. I picked up hanyu pinyin effortlessly and I loved it. It was the only section of my Chinese exams that I would score well in.

  2. Little Miss Drinkalot Avatar

    I think they introduced the pinyin system when I entered Primary One, so it was a very smooth transition for me. I picked up hanyu pinyin effortlessly and I loved it. It was the only section of my Chinese exams that I would score well in.

  3. Mr Miyagi Avatar

    But you’re from a Chinese Helicopter school…

  4. Mr Miyagi Avatar

    But you’re from a Chinese Helicopter school…

  5. ParadiseRoad Avatar

    HK names: start with ‘Apple’.

  6. ParadiseRoad Avatar

    HK names: start with ‘Apple’.

  7. cokecat Avatar

    hahaha
    chinese helicopter school ๐Ÿ˜› it just tickles me dammit

    but i have to say pin yin was the only reason why i passed chinese man, even if only barely

    those silly twits devising the pin yin system just engrishnized mandarin! whenever i wrote chinese compos, it would look like an english compo with a sprinkling of chinese characters…mostly words like wo, ni, ta, ma, de ๐Ÿ˜‰

  8. cokecat Avatar

    hahaha
    chinese helicopter school ๐Ÿ˜› it just tickles me dammit

    but i have to say pin yin was the only reason why i passed chinese man, even if only barely

    those silly twits devising the pin yin system just engrishnized mandarin! whenever i wrote chinese compos, it would look like an english compo with a sprinkling of chinese characters…mostly words like wo, ni, ta, ma, de ๐Ÿ˜‰

  9. Mr Miyagi Avatar

    Chinese compos! A classmate wrote one about how the Chinese teacher’s son got killed by terrorists at the National Library. Only he couldn’t write very well, and didn’t know the Chinese word for terrorist. So, chen lao shi de er zi bei wai guo lai de huai ren sha si le. (Teacher Chen’s son was killed by foreign bad guy).

    P.S. LMD may or may not like your entry about uniforms, esp the bit about Nanyang uniforms. Shinseki Mushrooms! Hahahahahaha!

  10. Mr Miyagi Avatar

    Chinese compos! A classmate wrote one about how the Chinese teacher’s son got killed by terrorists at the National Library. Only he couldn’t write very well, and didn’t know the Chinese word for terrorist. So, chen lao shi de er zi bei wai guo lai de huai ren sha si le. (Teacher Chen’s son was killed by foreign bad guy).

    P.S. LMD may or may not like your entry about uniforms, esp the bit about Nanyang uniforms. Shinseki Mushrooms! Hahahahahaha!

  11. cokecat Avatar

    hahaha
    ooops
    actually i’ve been looking in on LMD’s site regularly from a link in one of your earlier globs

  12. cokecat Avatar

    hahaha
    ooops
    actually i’ve been looking in on LMD’s site regularly from a link in one of your earlier globs

  13. ParadiseRoad Avatar

    Some other HK names: ‘Roman’ or ‘Queenie’. Can or not?

  14. ParadiseRoad Avatar

    Some other HK names: ‘Roman’ or ‘Queenie’. Can or not?

  15. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    alt: there are exceptions though. my friend’s campmate’s chinese name is Zhou Zhihong, and his hokkien name? CHAU CHEE HONG. go figure. -_-

    i need an ang moh mia lahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

  16. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    alt: there are exceptions though. my friend’s campmate’s chinese name is Zhou Zhihong, and his hokkien name? CHAU CHEE HONG. go figure. -_-

    i need an ang moh mia lahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

  17. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    alt: another one. a colleague that we dislike. her english name is shirley, chinese is xue li, and the cantonese name? Shit Lee. ๐Ÿ™

  18. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    alt: another one. a colleague that we dislike. her english name is shirley, chinese is xue li, and the cantonese name? Shit Lee. ๐Ÿ™

  19. Andrew Avatar

    “Lily Lee Li Li” – you want to know where she’s gone? When i was in primary school (that must be 10 yrs ago) there was a teacher with that same name there!
    check with agagooga if he still remembers her.

  20. Andrew Avatar

    “Lily Lee Li Li” – you want to know where she’s gone? When i was in primary school (that must be 10 yrs ago) there was a teacher with that same name there!
    check with agagooga if he still remembers her.

  21. […] ha. He he. Ho ho. But if you’re going to name your kids something that will invite taunting and ridicule, at […]

  22. debbie Avatar
    debbie

    When I was in RGS, there was a teacher there called Lily Li Leelee. Subject to merciless jokes by the students.

  23. debbie Avatar
    debbie

    When I was in RGS, there was a teacher there called Lily Li Leelee. Subject to merciless jokes by the students.

  24. holyhunk Avatar
    holyhunk

    Yes, pinyinised names might be a mouthful, but dialect names tend to be victims of mockery.

    Like hearing the mee see at the polyclinic shouting for her Cantonese patient Teng Ah Yee (which means mad or crazy). Rose Huang Mei Gui which sounds alright in Mandarin, becomes Ng Buay Kuay in Hokkein. You’d probably think she sells chicken at the wet market. And you might have heard a name that does a hardsell of sour plums: SNG BUAY HO. Mind you, they are in dialect, not pinyin!

    Come on guys, the people up there are only trying to make things easier for the chinese community. Yes, I happen to have made my proud exit from one of miyagi’s derogatory “Chinese Helicopter” school, so I embrace my pinyinised name wholeheartedly. By the way, pardon me for sounding smug, but thanks to mum for giving me a name that sounds VERY pleasing to the ears in both mandarin and cantonese. And THANK GOD, that she didn’t use Hokkein for my dialect name on the birth cert. (My dad is Hokkein you see). But if my dad had insisted on using the Hokkein equivalent, I would have no choice but to accept it anyway.

    So, it’s not about whether the name is pinyinised, dialectised, christened or Anglo-Celtic-Judaic. It’s YOUR mindset. Mr and Mrs Bananas out there, stop blaming the pinyin system when the Taiwanese have to learn zhu yin fu hao on top of writing in traditional characters.

  25. holyhunk Avatar
    holyhunk

    Yes, pinyinised names might be a mouthful, but dialect names tend to be victims of mockery.

    Like hearing the mee see at the polyclinic shouting for her Cantonese patient Teng Ah Yee (which means mad or crazy). Rose Huang Mei Gui which sounds alright in Mandarin, becomes Ng Buay Kuay in Hokkein. You’d probably think she sells chicken at the wet market. And you might have heard a name that does a hardsell of sour plums: SNG BUAY HO. Mind you, they are in dialect, not pinyin!

    Come on guys, the people up there are only trying to make things easier for the chinese community. Yes, I happen to have made my proud exit from one of miyagi’s derogatory “Chinese Helicopter” school, so I embrace my pinyinised name wholeheartedly. By the way, pardon me for sounding smug, but thanks to mum for giving me a name that sounds VERY pleasing to the ears in both mandarin and cantonese. And THANK GOD, that she didn’t use Hokkein for my dialect name on the birth cert. (My dad is Hokkein you see). But if my dad had insisted on using the Hokkein equivalent, I would have no choice but to accept it anyway.

    So, it’s not about whether the name is pinyinised, dialectised, christened or Anglo-Celtic-Judaic. It’s YOUR mindset. Mr and Mrs Bananas out there, stop blaming the pinyin system when the Taiwanese have to learn zhu yin fu hao on top of writing in traditional characters.

  26. […] friend was pointing out something funny in local blogger mr. miyagi’s blogpost from dinosaur years ago (no idea why she dug up the post) and something sounded weirdly familiar. I remember one year in […]

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