Internet Engineering Task Force H. Deng
Internet-Draft Z. Cao
Intended status: Informational China Mobile
Expires: January 11, 2014 July 10, 2013
How to Call Chinese People's Names
draft-deng-call-chinese-names-00
Abstract
This document tries to give a brief introduction of how to call
Chinese people's name in Chinese way. After reading this, you will
find it quite easy to accomplish that.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on January 11, 2014.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Deng & Cao Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Chinese-names July 2013
Table of Contents
1. Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Way to call Chinese name in mainland . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Titles in Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. The 'Four Tones' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
8. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1. Background
There were only two participants from mainland China in the IETF 60th
meeting at San Diego, while today there are more than 150
participants from mainland China each time. But it seems that there
are still many diffculties for western people to correctly call
Chinese people's names. This document is purposefully trying to make
it easy for westerns. It mainly discusses about "Han" people in
mainland of China, and doesn't include other 55 minority group who
speak their own languages.
2. Way to call Chinese name in mainland
In China, when we call somebody's name, we usually put his/her Last
name first, and first name last.
Most Last/Family names have only one Chinese character, and only a
few consist of two characters.
For first names, both one-character names and two-character names are
common.
So normally people names have two tp three Chinese characters (Today
even for). For those whose names have two characters, we normally
speak out all the characters in their names. For those whose names
have more than two characters, we normally speak out their first name
only, which is similar to western way.
For example, Hui Deng, as an author of the draft, is a name of two
characters, where we put his first name first "Hui", but when we call
him, Chinese people usually call him Deng Hui (without titles in use,
when titles are used, refer to the next section).
Deng & Cao Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Chinese-names July 2013
Take 'Xiaodong Duan' as another example. This is a name of three
characters (Xiaodong as the first name and Duan is the family name).
So Chinese people would usually neglect its last name, and just call
him by using his first names - Xiaodong.
People only call two characters probably because they prefer only two
syllables other to three syllables, one chinese character normally
has only one syllable.
Getting back, when people are not familiar with each other or
introduce each other Chinese people will use full name to show their
respectation whatever two, three or four characters
3. Titles in Use
Most chinese people are called by different names according to the
relationship between each other. In other words, parents call their
children by one name, his/her friends call him/her by something else,
and colleagues have another name for him. These different names
include titles (terms of respect), nicenames, and so on. Humble
attitude is an authentic tradition in chinese culture, the
respectation by using special terms is always given to the people
according to his/her occupation or status in society.
Nowadays, there are many commonly used titles. Two generic titles
that have similar meanings to "Mr." and "Ms./Mrs." are "Xian1sheng1"
and "Nv3Shi4". These two titles have been widely used either between
peoples who are unfamiliar with each other, or during the formal
situations like the conference.(1,2,3,4 in this section will be
explained in next section)
Another two commonly used titles are "Jiao4shao4" and "Lao3shi1"
which indicate that people is a professor or instructor. Suppose the
surname of that professor or teacher is "Zhang", then you could him/
her "Zhang Jiao4shou4" or "Zhang Lao3shi1". Other titles which also
have been widely used are as follows: "Lao3ban3" stands for the boss
of the company, "Zhu3Xi2" stands for "chairman", "Zong" stands for
"President of company", in most cases, you can add his surname in
front of the title. Rare cases, add his/her given name in front of
the title.
An unknown person such as taxi driver on the street can be called as
"Shi1fu1". The term means "Master", and it may means that he can
help to bring you somewhere.
4. The 'Four Tones'
Deng & Cao Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft Chinese-names July 2013
This document has used four tones of Chinese (1: Even level; 2:
Rising; 3: Departing; 4: Entering). We usually denoted using the
alphanumberic. For example, Deng4 Hui1.
Mandarin uses four tones to clarify the meanings of words. Since
many characters have the same sound, tones are used to differentiate
words from each other. Similar to the different intonations in
English language.
The tones sometimes are difficult to learn, as intonations and
pitches in English to non-native speakers. Normally people who speak
Latin can only pronounce the 'Even level', because there are no
equivalent differentiation in those language as we had guessed.
5. Acknowledgement
Authors would like to thank Magaret Wasserman for understanding to
encourage western people to learn how to call chinese name, "Deng
Hui" would thanks Kent Leung's encouragement on writing this
document. And many thanks go to Fred baker, Sri Gundave, Jari Arkko
and Ted Lemmon for calling our names in chinese way already. Thanks
also Yu Juan for detail revision of this document
6. IANA Considerations
NO IANA Requests.
7. Security Considerations
N/A.
8. Informative References
[ChineseNames]
Wikipedia, ., "Chinese Names,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_name", May 2013.
[Pinyin] Wikipedia, ., "Pinyin,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin", May 2013.
[Tones] Wikipedia, ., "Tones,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_tones", May 2013.
Deng & Cao Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft Chinese-names July 2013
Authors' Addresses
Hui Deng
China Mobile
Xuanwumenxi Ave. No.32
Beijing 100053
China
Email: denghui@chinamobile.com
Zhen Cao
China Mobile
Xuanwumenxi Ave. No.32
Beijing, Beijing 100053
China
Email: zehn.cao@gmail.com, caozhen@chinamobile.com
Deng & Cao Expires January 11, 2014 [Page 5]