Internet DRAFT - draft-deng-call-chinese-names

draft-deng-call-chinese-names







Internet Engineering Task Force                                  H. Deng
Internet-Draft                                                    Z. Cao
Intended status: Informational                              China Mobile
Expires: January 16, 2014                                  July 15, 2013


                How to Call Chinese "Han" People's Names
                    draft-deng-call-chinese-names-01

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
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 16, 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
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.





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Table of Contents

   1.  Background  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Way to call Chinese name in mainland  . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  Most confusion part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   5.  The 'Four Tones'  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   6.  Titles in Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   7.  Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   9.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   10. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   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 English speaking people to correctly
   call Chinese people's names.  This document is purposefully trying to
   make it easy for English speaking people who care.  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 family
   name first, and given name last.

   Most Family names have only one Chinese character, and only a few
   consist of two characters.

   For given names, both one-character names and two-character names are
   common.

   So normally people names have two to 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 given name
   only, which is similar to English way.

   For example, Hui Deng, as an author of the draft, is a name of two
   characters, where we put his given 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).





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   Take 'Xiaodong Duan' as another example.  This is a name of three
   characters (Xiaodong as the given name and Duan is the family name).
   So Chinese people would usually neglect its family name, and just
   call him by using his given 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
   respects whatever two, three or four characters

3.  Most confusion part

   Because both Chinese and English speakers may try to conform with
   other language, so chinese people will put their given name in the
   front and family name in the end, like "Hui Deng" in the Internet
   draft, but English speaker will try to read the name by following
   chinese way.  "Hui Deng", then it get confusion.

   It is more common for the family name to come first when written in
   Pinyin.  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"

4.  Women

   Most of the Chinese women don't change to our husband's family name.
   So, Ida Leung's husband is not Mr Leung.  They love to keep our own
   family name.  Today some chinese kid have both father and mother's
   family name, then given name.

5.  The 'Four Tones'

   This document has used four tones of Chinese (1: Even level; 2:
   Rising; 3: Departing; 4: Entering).  We usually denoted using the
   alphanumeric.  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.



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6.  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.( the digits 1,2,3,4 in this section
   are intentional and they are used to denote the tone , will be
   explained in later section)

   Another two commonly used titles are "Jiao4shou4" 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.

7.  Acknowledgement

   Authors would like to thank Margaret Wasserman for understanding to
   encourage English speaking 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.

   After submited the initial version draft, this draft has been revised
   from many kind advices for revision from Cameron Byrne, Ida Leung, S.
   Moonesamy, Will Liu, Mikael Abrahamsson, Simon Perreault, Stephen
   Sprunk, John C Klensin, Ted Hardie, Melinda Shore, Noel Chiappa,
   George Wes, Randy Bush,




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8.  IANA Considerations

   NO IANA Requests.

9.  Security Considerations

   N/A.

10.  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.

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













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