Talk:Chinese exonyms

References

• A tag on the article has queried about references. The reference here is any good English/Chinese language dictionary or anyone who is fluent in both languages. As regards notability: Mandarin Chinese is a major world language. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Dialects

I'm not sure about this, but I believe for the Heathrow example given, the Chinese name sounds like it came from Cantonese (希斯路 Hei Si Lou) which sounds closer to Heathrow compared to Mandarin (Xi Si Lu) that's cited. I do think there are a couple of Mandarin transliterations that came via Cantonese (or other dialects) depending on which "clan" popularised the name first. Derrickflc (talk) 17:22, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Exonyms?

Are these really exonyms? I would argue that most of them are simply transliterations, taking into account the fact mentioned in the beginning that Chinese characters have certain limitations when trying to transliterate non-Chinese names. In the same way that Beijing is not really an "exonym" for 北京, but rather a transliteration - the best that Latin characters could do when trying to transliterate non-Latin names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LeinSora (talk • contribs) 23:38, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

I keep asking why we need such lists to illustrate the obvious fact that each language adapts foreign names to its own phonology; and others keep explaining that it's vital to keep such lists because ... well it is, so there. �—Tamfang (talk) 00:55, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Move to Mandarin exonyms?

I am aware that most varieties of Chinese use the same Hanzi, but the transliterations focus on the Mandarin form.

Unrelatedly, I do agree solely phonological adaptions should typically be removed, however i have tried to keep less uniform ones and ones written with characters that spell out a plain word or phrase. By "uniform" i mean matching the sound less exactly. For instance the English vowel long o becoming ou not e in Pinyin. If that makes sense. Starbeam2 (talk) 11:36, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Imprecision of classifiers

In the heading, there is a distinction made between countries that use characters in their native languages (if not everyday, there is a system for it). These countries are, as far as I know, limited to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

There is also a distinction drawn for the cities that have their own special history (San Francisco, Melbourne) that have names with a totally different origin than the english name.

However, in the previous version, everything is just labelled as transcribed or translated which contradicts the heading of the article and is way too simplistic and even incorrect. I changed San Francisco and Melbourne to 'Special History' but I don't know what other cities/places fall into that category (I know a few street names in chinatown SF that have this though), and also I don't know what to call the names coming from countries that have a system for writing words in chinese characters, which can then be read directly. But the current system is broken. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dl2187 (talk • contribs) 17:18, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Removal of transliterated names

There is already a system for converting english names into chinese https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E5%A4%96%E8%AA%9E%E8%AD%AF%E9%9F%B3%E8%A1%A8/%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E , and there are similar tables for every language of origin https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/Wikipedia:%E5%A4%96%E8%AA%9E%E8%AD%AF%E9%9F%B3%E8%A1%A8 There is no need to catalog these names because they are uninteresting, except in cases where they do not match the standard characters used for transliterating words (I believe these types of tables are made by Xinhua). One example is Manila 马尼拉 which seems to match the standardized characters defined for transliteration by Xinhua and so unless it has its own parallel origin (unlikely?), it is utterly uninteresting and should be removed. I did not go exhaustively through the list to find every example of this. However, in cases where this sort of name is common but there is a second, perhaps less used name, then it can be appropriate. Therefore, only names with a different origin, characters used in foreign languages (East Asia specific), or translated names should be kept (and halfway cases that are partly transliterated and translated), since they have no other place. But the length of the list would grow significantly because there are a lot of translated names of places. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dl2187 (talk • contribs) 17:26, 26 June 2022 (UTC)