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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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