How to Write Chinese and other Asian names in English

Today I want to talk about something rather different from my recent posts, which have focused on politics and books. This is more of a writing style and editing issue, but one that comes up quite frequently here in Taiwan. It is the problem of how to write Chinese names in English texts. I'm not so much concerned here with the particular type of romanization (for those who don't know the term, this refers to spelling words from languages like Chinese, Thai, and Arabic using the Latin-based English alphabet) used, but the order in which the names should be written. This arises because in Chinese names the family name comes first, followed by the given name. This is true in most East Asian countries, including Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

Actually, the answer is quite simple: Romanized Chinese names should be written the same way they are written in Chinese, with the family name first. Thus we write Ma Ying-jeou (the president of Taiwan), Tsai Ing-wen (the leader of the opposition DPP), Hu Jintao (the president of China), and Mao Zedong (the former leader of China), and to be brief refer to them by their family names only, i.e., Ma, Tsai, Hu, and Mao. This is quite straightforward, but unfortunately many Taiwanese still end up confused, partly due to misguided attempts to adapt their names to English conventions.

Many Taiwanese have the idea that because in English names the family name comes last, they should also put their family name last when they write their name in English. But this is incorrect, unless they are using an English given name. For instance, the former vice president of Taiwan, Lu Xiulian, uses the English name Annette, so she is generally called Annette Lu in English-language news reports. But Chinese names are always written in the Chinese order, whether they are written in Chinese characters or in the English alphabet. Ma Ying-jeou does not use an English name, so his family name is written first. No respectable news organization writes it as Ying-jeou Ma. Unfortunately, many Taiwanese are not aware that this is an error; I even had my romanizations of a number of Taiwanese names appearing in my translation of the liner notes of Story Island (an album that won a number of awards and a Grammy nomination for design packaging) reversed by a Taiwanese editor, which infuriated me when I discovered it (especially since it makes it look like I myself made the errors).

The same principle applies to Korean names, so the president of South Korea is Lee Myung-bak (family name Lee) and the leader of North Korea is Kim Jong-il (family name Kim). Vietnamese names are likewise written family name first, so the prime minister of Vietnam is Nguyen Tan Dung (family name Nguyen). The only frequent exception to this rule is Japanese names. In Japanese, the family name also comes first, but it has become common practice to reverse this when the name is written in English, so the prime minister of Japan, whose name reads Kan Naoto in Japanese, usually appears as Naoto Kan in English news (though I have seen Japanese names written in the proper Japanese order in some places, and I prefer to write them that way myself).

Another common error Taiwanese make in writing their names is to leave the order alone but to put a comma after the family name. This incorrect and ugly (aesthetically-speaking) habit is particularly common among academics and people who have pursued advanced degrees, and seems to derive from the use of the comma in English names found in bibliographies, indexes and similar lists. But the reason for the comma in English names in such situations is simple; since in bibliographies and indexes we list names alphabetically by last (family) name, we reverse the usual order and use the comma to indicate this. So Barack Obama becomes Obama, Barack and Hillary Clinton becomes Clinton, Hillary. If a Chinese name appears in an index or bibliography, of course the family name comes first, but for Chinese names this is already the usual order, so no comma is necessary. Even for English names we only write something like "Obama, Barack" in specific situations. But some Taiwanese stick commas in their names on business cards and documents, and in the building housing the offices of Taiwan's legislators, the name plates on their doors actually have commas after their family names, which looks ridiculous.

One reason some Taiwanese have offered me for either writing their names backwards or sticking a comma into them is a fear that Westerners won't realize which name is their family name. I'll admit that if a Taiwanese writes his name as Lee Teng-hui, some Westerners might mistakenly call him "Mr. Teng-hui" rather than "Mr. Lee", though frankly I can't see how anyone who ever reads the international news could have a problem (everyone who does should be aware that Hu Jintao is "Mr. Hu" and Deng Xiaoping was "Mr. Deng"). But even if a few foreigners are ignorant, there is no reason for East Asians to mangle their own names to accommodate them. Perhaps on business cards or name tags they might want to capitalize their family name (e.g., TSAI Ing-wen), but that's as far as they should go.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts and the advice of style manuals (not to mention the example of sites like Wikipedia and numerous news reports and articles from major international media organizations), Taiwanese still write their names all sorts of ways. I have even seen names written backward and with a comma (e.g., Ying-jeou, Ma), which combines the worst features of the two more common incorrect ways of writing names without even retaining the dubious virtue of clarifying which is the family name (though I suppose in a certain sense the comma is more logical here, because the normal ordering has really been reversed -- though this still doesn't explain why one would want to reverse it in the first place). While there is only so much I can do, I try to at least make sure the people I come into regular contact with learn the correct way of writing their names in English. Hopefully that will make at least a little bit of a difference.