What's in a Name?

Transliteration across different languages often fascinates me. At the same time, it may look like the selection of words (or alphabet) can vary much from the original language. Name of places especially, is often quite different from one language to another. Take Seoul, capital of South Korea for example. It is used to be called 漢城 or 汉城 in Chinese, where it is pronounce hàn chéng, but on 18 Jan 2005, Seoul Metropolitan Government officially announced Chinese equivalent of Seoul is to be called 首尔 or 首爾， pronounce as shǒu ěr, word by word pronunciation, but phonetically, shóu ěr. Interested reader should check on the Net for more debate and discussion on this topic. How does someone decide how to transliterate a name from one language to another? Russia for example, is known as 俄罗斯 or 俄羅斯，pronounce as é luó sī. If any reader knows the logic, please let me know. It often intrigues me to look for such information, but as usual, hardly any information on the standard of selection of words. Same case here in Malaysia, selection of words in Chinese for foreign words often vary from one source to another. There seems to be no standard across, even in other Chinese speaking country. The local Chinese community here thus set up a committee, called 马来西亚华语规范理事会, or Malaysia Chinese Standardisation Committee, to standardise the use of Chinese words in transliteration. It has to date release the official transliteration of government ministries and ministers name, the name of all states in Malaysia and its capital, and a couple of commonly used words like Ringgit and so on. The standardisation process sparks some debate on which words to use. I'll discuss more on this in future posting.