Names in Different Dialects

[Randy W]

How many of us have SO's with 2 names? Chinese names are spelled with Chinese characters which are the same in most of the different dialects. But the pronunciation of those characters is different.

 

For example, my SO's name is Wu Jiaying (the Mandarin pronunciation is the legal one, as is the Mandarin pinyin spelling). Her Cantonese name, however, is Ng Gaajing, which is what her family calls her.

 

She wants me to use her Mandarin name.

[tonado]

Same name but different pronunication. Mandarin pronunication should be easier than Cantonese pronunication.

[frank1538]

We had a similar issue with KK, my step daughter. The Chinese characters for her name are the same for both Mandarin and Cantonese, but the pinyan is different - Qi Qi vs. Yi Qi. Because documents translated from Chinese to English usually use the pinyan spelling for the name, we ended up with a first set of documents where the pinyan was the Cantonese version. We went back to the notarial offices to get all the translations conformed to a single usage - Mandarin.