Talk:Naming laws in China/Archive 1

Archive 1

Minorities?

Are there any special regulation for minorities, esp. regarding transcription or surnames? I can easily see either of the two being an issue, for example pinyin transcriptions of Uighur or Mongolian names usually look ugly as hell, and the surname seems to be chosen quite abitrarily, either the first character from the transcription of the name into Chinese characters, or the transcription of one part of the name, or "XXX". Certainly Zhao C is not the only guy with naming issues. Yaan (talk) 12:07, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I thought this was the English Wikipedia

So, then, why are 90% of the references in the article expressed in Chinese characters? It's a good bet that 99% of visitors to this wiki don't read Chinese, and, therefore, the references look like just so much gobbledygook to them. The reference titles need to be supplemented by English equivalents, or replaced entirely with English translations. Further, if the references are in English, but the source material is in a foreign language, this needs to be indicated for each footnote and external link. —Quicksilver^{T @} 02:16, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Ma Cheng

My browser is one of the ones that has problems with this name. Any chance we could get an image of it (preferably in .svg, but if you can't do that then someone at WP:GL/I can convert anything to svg) to use inline? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

There is This image from http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=299E2&useutf8=false which I might add to the side, or to complement the text. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 02:51, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

OK now we have File:Zh cheng rare.gif up. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 02:53, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

That would be nice. The terms of use are hard for me to understand, but I think the unicode characters themselves are free to use. Not sure what kind of license you would use when uploading it, though. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:53, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, the tag you've used looks fine. I didn't realize we had a tag like that! rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:54, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Writing systems are exempt from copyright; refer to the template I have added on the IMG page. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 02:55, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, I think the image needs fixing, there are blue lines, and the top/bottom of the image makes it too thick, ruining the lines in the article. I'm gunna up a new version. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 02:56, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I just posted a request to have that stuff done, as well as to get it vectorized so it'll show up better at the small size: Wikipedia:Graphic_Lab/Image_workshop#Chinese_character. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:58, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

A step further than you, hehehe. I've already fixed the image. :D -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 02:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Do we have the pinyin pronunciation for her name? howcheng {chat} 06:20, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

As her name is a variant character of 骋, it is chěng. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 09:42, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Haha, just realized something ironic. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 13:32, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Redirects

The names of the persons used as examples should redirect here. 70.29.213.241 (talk) 05:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Already done. See Ma Cheng, Wang At, Zhao C. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 08:00, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Add image under fair use?

Would it be possible to add an image of Ma Cheng's 1st Generation Resident Identity Card (PRC) from [1] onto the article, under an agreement of fair use? Right now the article has zero images, and such an image would be beneficial in illustrating the details explained in the article. It may constitute under fair use if it is 1. used only in this article, to illustrate something; 2. as it is practically impossible to obtain a free copy of an expired legal document, the current image (edited to show the card only, without adjacent text) can be considered eligible for fair use; and 3. such legal documents are property of the Government of the People's Republic of China, which thus are under the realms of Public domain. However, since the image is obtained from NYTimes, it must be declared that an image derived from the original one found on NYTimes (through editing) must be declared originating from there (as the source). -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 01:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

And if this were the case, I would also prefer mosaicing out the last 14 digits of her JMSFZ number. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 01:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Check it

• LaFraniere, Sharon (21 April 2009). "Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 April 2009.

The timing of this NYT piece seems awfully convenient, coming just a couple days after this article was on the MP. Maybe we captured some NYT reporter's interest? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:46, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

That's what I thought. :D -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 03:01, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

One thing I noticed...in the NYT article there's a picture of her shenfenzheng, and the character for cheng there appears to be a simplified-character version of what we have in the article. Given that this is an article about the PRC, should we go bother the Graphic Labs people again and ask someone to make a new version of the .svg image we have here? Or is the character on her ID something that doesn't actually exist and they just put there because the computers can't handle the real thing? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

From the articles I have read before, her name is three traditional Mas. Perhaps the simplified Mas on her JMSFZ relate to a forced usage of simplified characters? I didn't even know that a simplified variant of Cheng existed (well, it isn't in Unicode for one. Unicode only supports "𩧢", and that too is only displayed properly if you have the new language packs installed (I now can see that character displayed perfectly in my browser, yay). There is no simplified variant in Unicode as of yet.) The NYT article says that her name was handwritten, anyways. Perhaps the PRC still has its iron-gripped preference over Simplified Characters? I see the usage of the simplified variant as something in regards to readability by other mainlanders, similar to mainland entertainment magazines referring JJ Lin as 林俊杰 while his real name is 林俊傑. We're not sure if the simplified usage is her real name, or an adaption. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 03:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

In this video (ref #3 in the article) there are some handwritten simplified chengs (around 1:13–1:30). I assume it's her handwriting, but I don't know. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Image added. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 03:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the simplified version exists in Zhonghua Zihai, I've searched all the characters with the simplified horse radical (took me a while, there's a s***load of them) and could not find it. Also, regarding the timing of the article, its funny you mention that. This is exactly what happened after my "Baidu 10 Creatures" article got slashdotted, the NY Times reports on it. Within two weeks of me creating the article, it appears on Slashdot, followed by something like 11.4K views, refer to the page stats. A France 24 article even linked to my Wikipedia article. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 12:09, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Technical Issues

Can someone who knows more about Chinese name registration please clarify what level of support is required for a character to be acceptable as a legal Chinese name? The latest version of Unicode encodes over 70,000 Chinese characters. Many of those characters may not be accessible through normal Chinese input methods, and can only be input by specifying a Unicode code point. Similarly, many of those character may not be included in commonly available fonts.

Scott Roy Atwood (talk) 08:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Possibly useful source

Just stumbled across this:

• Mair, Victor (21 April 2009). "A Limitation on Names in the PRC". Language Log. Retrieved 27 June 2009.

Haven't had time to read it yet, but I imagine it probably has some additional analysis beyond what the NYT article does. (Though I don't always agree with him, Victor Mair is a well-respected scholar in the fields of Chinese orthography, romanization, etc., as well as Chinese linguistics in general.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:25, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

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