Her name (as shown in the picture) is particularly problematic, as a result of its infrequency and the incompleteness of the Simplified Chinese character system. Although Mainland China's official...
Her name (as shown in the picture) is particularly problematic, as a result of its infrequency and the incompleteness of the Simplified Chinese character system.
Although Mainland China's official guidelines for Simplified Chinese provide some linguistic schemas that could deduce a character's simplification (in many cases, unambiguously), simplification has never been without exceptions. Unless a hypothetically well-formed, schema-following simplified character really enters a lexicon and sees some fairly frequent use, one can never be sure that such a simplification even exists in the first place. And if there's a scarcity of corpus material, the route to digitalization could be extremely difficult for those Simplified characters in limbo.
Her name ultimately derives from one of the variants of the Traditional character 瑩. By Traditional Chinese orthography, this is the canonical character that should be used in modern writing and printing. It's in fact a fairly high-frequency character and commonly used in names.
In Simplified orthography, this character's simplification is 莹. Again, no problem here...
Now that the non-orthographic variant, or allograph, or yi ti zi, 㼆, is indeed an attested and encoded character. As a variant of the Traditional character 瑩, it may appear in texts that follows the Traditional system.
The author's unprintable name is what the Simplified Chinese equivalent of 㼆 will look like, if the simplification schemas are followed. Unfortunately for her, there doesn't appear to be a codepoint for this character yet. If there were a way to make combination CJK characters in Unicode, it would have been made from ⺩͏莹 -- but character combination for CJK is a whole can of worms and a route not followed by Unicode.
Edit: I should have included this observation about Chinese character simplification, which contributed to her plight.
The process of simplification is also one of creating a new orthography. If, in Traditional texts, a character comes with a bunch of yi ti zi (e.g. 瑩 with 㼆 among many others), the linguists in charge of simplification may decide that the entire equivalent class of Traditional characters should be simplified into one canonical character in the new orthography. This effectively abandons many Traditional yi ti zi, in particular the rare variants.
Not about rare Chinese characters, but I have a silly story about the perils of picking a name in China... I lived in China for more than three years, and it's pretty customary for foreigners to...
Not about rare Chinese characters, but I have a silly story about the perils of picking a name in China...
I lived in China for more than three years, and it's pretty customary for foreigners to pick a Chinese name that somehow echoes their original names. This is because of the writing system where the characters have specific meanings, so you don't just want a similar-sounding name that has a gibberish meaning.
So before I left, a Chinese friend from Hong Kong who knows passing Mandarin gave me a pretty cool name: "Wang Yong." Wang means "king" and is a reference to my surname, while Yong means "brave," which my friend said I was for moving to China.
Turns out my friend wasn't that versed in Mandarin (his native language, being from Hong Kong, is Cantonese), and my name got me a LOT of raised eyebrows. To a Chinese person, it sounded like the most hillbilly name you could imagine.
Basically, I was the China equivalent of a Chinese man walking around Alabama calling himself "Billy Bob Jackson."
Another (Mandarin-speaking) Chinese friend eventually broke the news to me and helped me find another name, which has a beautiful meaning and sounds to my Chinese friends like some sort of romantic name from a bygone age. Pretty happy with the trade. :)
That's a fun story. We use to give our non canton friends bad names for fun, which is much easier than good names. I haven't been to Hong Kong for a while, and last time I saw some family, the...
That's a fun story. We use to give our non canton friends bad names for fun, which is much easier than good names.
I haven't been to Hong Kong for a while, and last time I saw some family, the Wang nickname is everywhere. It honestly sounds a bit hillbilly to me (but I also speak some Mandarin), so yeah...Super weird.
Before reading the article, I thought it was going to be about discrimination based on rare names or those from other cultures in China (much like here in Europe with "foreign" sounding names). I...
Before reading the article, I thought it was going to be about discrimination based on rare names or those from other cultures in China (much like here in Europe with "foreign" sounding names).
I was surprised to read such an insightful essay about a problem I couldn't have imagined existing, because it is unique to languages not using a standardized alphabet. China, for all it's faults, tends to be pretty good at providing technical services, if only so it's citizens don't complain about missing out things from behind the great firewall.
It seems to be different. Thank you for sharing this article, it was an interesting read.
A similar but distinct issue is present for the people with the last name of null, and a woman from Hawaii with 30+ characters in her name. Pretty interesting to consider the social impact of edge...
A similar but distinct issue is present for the people with the last name of null, and a woman from Hawaii with 30+ characters in her name.
Pretty interesting to consider the social impact of edge cases that many programmers will usually hand wave away as being too unlikely to be a problem.
It's really too bad that there's no way for them to somehow add their name in the database. However, they sort of have a made up name...Which you sort of expect this to happen. It was easier when...
It's really too bad that there's no way for them to somehow add their name in the database. However, they sort of have a made up name...Which you sort of expect this to happen. It was easier when everything was analog, because you would just tell someone how to write it and that's that.
The issue briefly mentioned for minorities is a much larger one in my opinion. Adding additional space for more characters is easily done. Considering the politics of China in the moment, where they are actively trying to assimilate minorities this is unlikely to change.
Edit to clarify: by made up name, I mean made up word.
Not really, though. The character itself has existed for times immemorial. It's just rare and little-known. Well, if that bank was working 100% analog, a rare name would still be an issue. You...
However, they sort of have a made up name...
Not really, though. The character itself has existed for times immemorial. It's just rare and little-known.
It was easier when everything was analog, because you would just tell someone how to write it and that's that.
Well, if that bank was working 100% analog, a rare name would still be an issue. You could draw it for the bank teller, but then not everyone would be able to read it because they need to know how the character is pronounced. Actually, even if they added that character in the register, it'd still be a pain in the ass because a lot of people wouldn't know how to pronounce it without a dictionary, I'm guessing.
Not really. The character is pronounced like its right part (莹), so it's pretty intuitive. It's not very hard to write, I'm surprised I can't find it on my keyboard. Most people asking how to...
Not really. The character is pronounced like its right part (莹), so it's pretty intuitive. It's not very hard to write, I'm surprised I can't find it on my keyboard. Most people asking how to write it on chinese forums seems to be given advice to customize a new character on their keyboard.
I admit my Chinese is limited. I just did a quick Google and the right part exists as well as one with the water radical, which seems to share the meaning they listed in the article. I know in...
I admit my Chinese is limited. I just did a quick Google and the right part exists as well as one with the water radical, which seems to share the meaning they listed in the article. I know in Hong Kong, I do see people just use common words and simply change the radical to use as a name. I wouldn't expect any of those to be easily found.
Rare is probably a better word.
Oh yeah, even in an analog system, it would be easier to input it, but definitely will still run into all the same issues as having a super rare name. Though I just read words as their right side when I don't know them...
For me, it's a bit like spelling Brian with two n's, prepare to be questioned on it forever and have autocorrect "fix" it every time.
Edit: it also wasn't in my dictionary...Granted I have one for high school, so I might need a more complete one for it.
Her name (as shown in the picture) is particularly problematic, as a result of its infrequency and the incompleteness of the Simplified Chinese character system.
Although Mainland China's official guidelines for Simplified Chinese provide some linguistic schemas that could deduce a character's simplification (in many cases, unambiguously), simplification has never been without exceptions. Unless a hypothetically well-formed, schema-following simplified character really enters a lexicon and sees some fairly frequent use, one can never be sure that such a simplification even exists in the first place. And if there's a scarcity of corpus material, the route to digitalization could be extremely difficult for those Simplified characters in limbo.
Her name ultimately derives from one of the variants of the Traditional character 瑩. By Traditional Chinese orthography, this is the canonical character that should be used in modern writing and printing. It's in fact a fairly high-frequency character and commonly used in names.
In Simplified orthography, this character's simplification is 莹. Again, no problem here...
Now that the non-orthographic variant, or allograph, or yi ti zi, 㼆, is indeed an attested and encoded character. As a variant of the Traditional character 瑩, it may appear in texts that follows the Traditional system.
The author's unprintable name is what the Simplified Chinese equivalent of 㼆 will look like, if the simplification schemas are followed. Unfortunately for her, there doesn't appear to be a codepoint for this character yet. If there were a way to make combination CJK characters in Unicode, it would have been made from ⺩͏莹 -- but character combination for CJK is a whole can of worms and a route not followed by Unicode.
Edit: I should have included this observation about Chinese character simplification, which contributed to her plight.
The process of simplification is also one of creating a new orthography. If, in Traditional texts, a character comes with a bunch of yi ti zi (e.g. 瑩 with 㼆 among many others), the linguists in charge of simplification may decide that the entire equivalent class of Traditional characters should be simplified into one canonical character in the new orthography. This effectively abandons many Traditional yi ti zi, in particular the rare variants.
That's really insightful. Thanks for sharing.
Not about rare Chinese characters, but I have a silly story about the perils of picking a name in China...
I lived in China for more than three years, and it's pretty customary for foreigners to pick a Chinese name that somehow echoes their original names. This is because of the writing system where the characters have specific meanings, so you don't just want a similar-sounding name that has a gibberish meaning.
So before I left, a Chinese friend from Hong Kong who knows passing Mandarin gave me a pretty cool name: "Wang Yong." Wang means "king" and is a reference to my surname, while Yong means "brave," which my friend said I was for moving to China.
Turns out my friend wasn't that versed in Mandarin (his native language, being from Hong Kong, is Cantonese), and my name got me a LOT of raised eyebrows. To a Chinese person, it sounded like the most hillbilly name you could imagine.
Basically, I was the China equivalent of a Chinese man walking around Alabama calling himself "Billy Bob Jackson."
Another (Mandarin-speaking) Chinese friend eventually broke the news to me and helped me find another name, which has a beautiful meaning and sounds to my Chinese friends like some sort of romantic name from a bygone age. Pretty happy with the trade. :)
That's a fun story. We use to give our non canton friends bad names for fun, which is much easier than good names.
I haven't been to Hong Kong for a while, and last time I saw some family, the Wang nickname is everywhere. It honestly sounds a bit hillbilly to me (but I also speak some Mandarin), so yeah...Super weird.
What was the second name?
I'd rather not say it as it's pretty unique and I'd be essentially doxing myself. Sorry. :)
Before reading the article, I thought it was going to be about discrimination based on rare names or those from other cultures in China (much like here in Europe with "foreign" sounding names).
I was surprised to read such an insightful essay about a problem I couldn't have imagined existing, because it is unique to languages not using a standardized alphabet. China, for all it's faults, tends to be pretty good at providing technical services, if only so it's citizens don't complain about missing out things from behind the great firewall.
It seems to be different. Thank you for sharing this article, it was an interesting read.
A similar but distinct issue is present for the people with the last name of null, and a woman from Hawaii with 30+ characters in her name.
Pretty interesting to consider the social impact of edge cases that many programmers will usually hand wave away as being too unlikely to be a problem.
If a user inputting Null breaks your program, I think that hints at bigger problems than just not accounting for edge cases.
It's really too bad that there's no way for them to somehow add their name in the database. However, they sort of have a made up name...Which you sort of expect this to happen. It was easier when everything was analog, because you would just tell someone how to write it and that's that.
The issue briefly mentioned for minorities is a much larger one in my opinion. Adding additional space for more characters is easily done. Considering the politics of China in the moment, where they are actively trying to assimilate minorities this is unlikely to change.
Edit to clarify: by made up name, I mean made up word.
Not really, though. The character itself has existed for times immemorial. It's just rare and little-known.
Well, if that bank was working 100% analog, a rare name would still be an issue. You could draw it for the bank teller, but then not everyone would be able to read it because they need to know how the character is pronounced. Actually, even if they added that character in the register, it'd still be a pain in the ass because a lot of people wouldn't know how to pronounce it without a dictionary, I'm guessing.
Not really. The character is pronounced like its right part (莹), so it's pretty intuitive. It's not very hard to write, I'm surprised I can't find it on my keyboard. Most people asking how to write it on chinese forums seems to be given advice to customize a new character on their keyboard.
Edit: found a traditional version - 㼆
I admit my Chinese is limited. I just did a quick Google and the right part exists as well as one with the water radical, which seems to share the meaning they listed in the article. I know in Hong Kong, I do see people just use common words and simply change the radical to use as a name. I wouldn't expect any of those to be easily found.
Rare is probably a better word.
Oh yeah, even in an analog system, it would be easier to input it, but definitely will still run into all the same issues as having a super rare name. Though I just read words as their right side when I don't know them...
For me, it's a bit like spelling Brian with two n's, prepare to be questioned on it forever and have autocorrect "fix" it every time.
Edit: it also wasn't in my dictionary...Granted I have one for high school, so I might need a more complete one for it.