Chinese names question

[riventhorn]

 I've had the "never use one-syllable names alone" drummed into me, but I am now confused about how to handle spelling out two-syllable names. For example, is it Kun Lun or Kunlun? Guo Chang Cheng or Guo Changcheng? or in Detective L, would it be Qin Xiaoman or Qin Xiao Man? Which is preferred? Does it make any difference? I've seen it done both ways.

I'm sure this has been answered somewhere on the internet before, but I was hoping my flist can save me from trawling Google. :) 

Comments

[china_shop]

There are some links in the resources post on sid_guardian about Chinese names in the context of Guardian, if that helps. :-)

[riventhorn]

Thanks! I've looked at those and hadn't seen this particular question addressed. It throws me because, for example, I see people write Qin Xiaoman all the time, but then the AO3 tags go with Qin Xiao Man and I get all indecisive and nervous about which I should do!!

[china_shop]

I can't speak to Chinese, but this happens in Korean, too. The AO3 tags use one format, subtitles use another, wikipedia pages another...

ETA: In the show, they have English names on the gravestones. The given name is written as one word, but the whole name is in the English order, eg, Li Qian's grandmother's gravestone reads "Yufen Li". /data point

[asya_ana]

Hi, you can combine two syllables of the first name, so Guo Changcheng or Qin Xiaoman :)

Kunlun is an odd case.:D

[riventhorn]

Do you know if one way is preferable over the other or does it just come down to personal preference?

[qikiqtarjuaq]

Kunlun is an unusual case, due to it being an existing name for a mountain/mythological figure. For everything else, it's a little bit preference and convention. It makes sense to me to group first name together, like Xiaoman, Changcheng, etc. But some people like to split it character by character and others even do camelcase, which is my least favorite approach.

[extrapenguin]

The official pinyin standard is Guo Changcheng, Qin Xiaoman. This is also least confusing to Western eyes: there is a surname and a given name. However, some people for some reason use "Guo Chang Cheng", whether out of ignorance or some other reason, I cannot say. There are fandoms on AO3 that use both methods, but I would please urge you to use the official pinyin standard of "Guo Changcheng", because that's the standard, and the other one looks ugly.

(Then there's also the non-pinyin transcription systems, where e.g. Wade-Giles is habitually written with a hyphen: Ch'in Hsiao-man. For mainland China stuff, pinyin is the accepted standard.)

[naye]

Being a huge nerd I actually dug into a bunch of style guides to sort this out? And basically for mainland Chinese names the current practice is to always write two-syllable names together. Here's a link to my post - this has reminded me I should bring it over to Dreamwidth!
https://for-the-flail.tumblr.com/post/180692586938/style-guide-chinese-names

[riventhorn]

Thank you!! It never occurred to me to check a style guide but of course.

[riventhorn]

Thank you! :) According to style guides linked to me by others, for mainland China, grouping the first name together is the way to go.

[riventhorn]

Thank you!!