Writing
Chinese names are written in Chinese characters. These originated from the Shang oracle bone script. The modern forms were largely established by the time of the Han dynasty's clerical script, but continued to develop. As new styles of calligraphy arose, variant characters sometimes entered the mainstream; likewise, some were political decisions whose success depended on the fate of their promulgators.
The two main modern forms are the simplified characters developed during the 1950s by the People's Republic of China and the traditional characters employed by the Republic of China, Hong Kong, and much of the Chinese diaspora. For example, a person who writes his name as 张伟 in a foreign country might be expected to come from mainland China or Singapore, while a 張偉 – the same name in traditional characters – might be asked if he or his family is originally from Taiwan or Hong Kong. When in Chinese speaking countries, the local variant of characters are used.
Chinese names in other East Asian countries have been influenced by the adoption of Hangul in Korea during the 1890s; the Japanese script reform beginning in 1900 and expanded after 1946 into the modern shinjitai; and the adoption of the Portuguese-based Quốc Ngữ script for Vietnamese after World War I.
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