Personal Names
Most people in Taiwan have their names romanised using a variation of Wade-Giles. This simplified version employs no diacritics (tone marks, apostrophes and umlauts) and, in semi- and unofficial contexts, usually incorrectly capitalized. The first letter in the second character of the given names should be, according to governmental and academic conventions, in the lower case, but in reality usually not. For example, Lü Hsiu-lien is sometimes written incorrectly as Lu Hsiu-Lien, contrary to the set rules of Wade-Giles. The use of Wade-Giles is generally not out of personal preference but because this system has been used by most government offices' reference materials in Taiwan to date.
There are a few Taiwanese personalities (such as politicians) whose names are transcribed in obscure or idiosyncratic schemes. For instance, using any major romanisation, Lee Teng-hui's surname would have been Li. Vincent Siew's surname and Ma Ying-jeou's given name are also peculiarly romanised. The single closest romanization to Chen Shui-bian's name would be Hanyu Pinyin, except that Hanyu Pinyin never uses hyphens in given names.
Read more about this topic: Romanization Of Chinese In The Republic Of China
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or names:
“Whatever an artist’s personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.”
—Willem De Kooning (b. 1904)
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)