Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese)
Guidelines on this page concern the systematic titling of articles related to the Chinese language. Many are an elaboration on or extension of larger guidelines, such as WP:COMMONNAME.
 | This guideline documents an English Wikipedia naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
Per WP:COMMONNAME, use the version of an individual's name that would be most familiar to an English-language readership. This categorically excludes forms that are not romanizations. With important exceptions, the common form is often the Hanyu Pinyin romanization without diacritics.
- For most historical figures, use non-diacritical Hanyu Pinyin: write Cai E, not Tsai Ao; write Zheng He, not Cheng Ho or Zhèng Hé.
- However, if a customary transliteration or anglicization is more common, it should be used instead: write Confucius, not Kongfuzi; write Sun Yat-sen, not Sun Yixian or Sun Zhongshan. This is most common among figures from the Classical period and the early 20th century.
- For individuals whose Chinese names are less commonly used, use the common name instead: write Vera Wang and Jeremy Lin, not Wang Weiwei and Lin Shuhao.
- Hanyu Pinyin is usually not the most common way of spelling names of people from Hong Kong (Leung Chun-ying), Singapore (Lee Kuan Yew), Taiwan (Lee Teng-hui), and older overseas Chinese communities.
- When using a Wade–Giles romanization, a hyphen should used between the syllables of a two-character given name, with the second syllable uncapitalised (unless a different form is clearly preferred): write Lee Teng-hui, not Lee Teng-Hui. Hong Kong names should also generally use the hyphenated style.
Ordering
Unlike with most Western names, Chinese personal names present the surname (either a family name or a clan name) before the given name. It is standard practice to adhere to this convention in English. However, when someone is commonly known by a Chinese name with given–surname order (e.g. Wen Ho Lee), this form should be used, and relevant redirects created from the surname–given ordering.
Emperors
While there are many exceptions, the common name to refer to a given emperor usually depends on era. In general:
- Emperors before the Tang dynasty use posthumous names, e.g. Emperor Wu of Han.
- Emperors of the Tang, Song, Liao and Jin (1115–1234) dynasties use temple names, e.g. Emperor Taizong of Tang.
- Emperors of the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty use era names (also known as "reign names"), e.g. Kangxi Emperor. Because these are not personal names, the correct phrasing takes the form "Kangxi Emperor", rather than "Emperor Kangxi".
Use the non-diacritical Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Chinese dynastic names. For clarity, whenever a dynastic name appears in an article title it should be followed by the word "dynasty" written with a lowercase d. Do not capitalize the word "dynasty", because it is not actually part of the dynastic name: write Ming dynasty, not Ming Dynasty. Adjectives such as "Eastern" or "Western" should be capitalized because they are part of the dynastic name: write Eastern Zhou dynasty, not eastern Zhou dynasty.
On the other hand, when the word "dynasty" appears as part of a proper noun (such as in the names of general historical periods), it should be capitalized: write Six Dynasties, not Six dynasties.
The main entry for a Chinese group should be under the name most familiar to English speakers. In some cases, this will be the translated name (for example, Aluminum Corporation of China Limited). In other cases, this will be the transliterated name (Tzu Chi and Tongmenghui). When the name is transliterated, the name should use the spelling conventionally used by English speakers (for example, Tzu Chi). Where this is not the pinyin transliteration there should be a redirect to the article from the pinyin name.
When a group uses a translated name, the Chinese characters should always be included, because there is not always a 1:1 correspondence of terms between Chinese and English. For example, the People's Republic of China uses the term 主席 (zhǔxí) to mean "president", but there are other Chinese words usually translated as "president", such as 總統 (zǒngtǒng). Additionally, some English-language sources may misspell or otherwise alter Chinese romanizations as to create ambiguity: for example, writing "Liu" as "Lu", or "Chiang" as "Chang".
Some older institutions maintain idiosyncratic spellings, which are sometimes legally incorporated overseas. Examples include Peking University, Peking Union Medical College, Tsinghua University, and Yenching University.
State organs
This is an incomplete list of reference material. People who are familiar with the matter are welcomed to provide better source.
- sank0916 (2006-11-10). "国家机关翻译表" [Translation Table of State Organs]. Baidu Zhidao.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - "国务院机构英文译名" [English Translation of Agencies in State Council] (MS DOC). Center of International Cooperation and Exchanges (Hong Kong, Macao & Taiwan Affairs), North China University of Technology Office.
- "单位及部门名称英译概述" [A Summary of English Translation of Organizations and Departments]. junpengyuan (in Chinese). 2008-10-07. This looks like an excerpt of a manual.
- Translation of Han dynasty titles. Wikipedia article. Discusses and compares translations, with Chinese characters provided.
- Like with personal names, use pinyin for place names in China unless another form is more common in contemporary English: write Sichuan, not Szechwan; write Hong Kong, not Xianggang.
- In comparison to personal names, historical romanizations of place names are much more likely to have fallen into disuse: write Guangzhou, not Canton; write Qingdao, not Tsingtao.
- For places without well-established names in English that may have distinct transliterations from different languages, which is often the case in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet, use the name preferred by Xinhua or similarly authoritative organs. For example, write Kashgar, not Kashi; write Shigatse, not Rikaze; conversely, write Baotou, not Bugat; write Kangding, not Dartsedo.
The default naming pattern is "X Class", e.g. Taihang Mountains, Hai River, Fei County. Articles for provinces and cities may leave out the class name, e.g. Liaobei or Beijing. Avoid tautologies; write Mount Tai, not "Mount Taishan"; write Xi River; not "Xijiang River".
Topographical features
| Type | char. | Normal | Disambiguate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| by location | by type | |||
| Mountain Range 山脉 山脈 | 1 | Qin Mountains 秦岭 | no example yet | no example yet |
| >1 | Taihang Mountains 太行山 | no example yet | no example yet | |
| Mountain Peak 山峰 |
1 | Mount Tai 泰山 | Mount Heng (Shanxi) 恒山 | Huangshan 黄山 |
| Mount Heng (Hunan) 衡山 | Huangshan City 黄山市 | |||
| >1 | Dahei Mountain 大黑山 Mount Wutai 五台山 |
no example yet | Wuzhi Mountain 五指山 | |
| Wuzhishan City 五指山市 | ||||
| River 河流 | 1 | Huai River 淮河 Xiang River 湘江 | Min River (Sichuan) 岷江 | no example yet |
| Min River (Fujian) 闽江 | no example yet | |||
| >1 | Jinsha River 金沙江 | no example yet | Mudan River 牡丹江 | |
| Mudanjiang 牡丹江市 | ||||
| Lake 湖泊 | 1 | Lake Tai 太湖 Chao Lake 巢湖 |
no example yet | Chao Lake 巢湖 |
| no example yet | Chaohu 巢湖市 | |||
| >1 | Hongze Lake 洪泽湖 | no example yet | Poyang Lake 鄱阳湖 | |
| Poyang County 鄱阳县 | ||||
Settlements and administrative units
In general, when deciding to disambiguate a place name, those settlements ranked higher administratively (i.e. higher up the following table) are primary topic over those ranked lower, unless sourcing exists to establish significant notability of a lower-ranked division. Thus settlements below the province-level should not be disambiguated with ", China".
Towns, townships and villages of the PRC are to be disambiguated according to the following procedure:
- By province-level division. Places in the districts of the following automatically go to 2A): All sub-provincial cities (except Jinan), Jilin City, Wuxi, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Kunming, Lanzhou, and Lhasa
- If the name is not unique within the province, disambiguate: A) By the prefecture-level city if the parent division is a district. B) By the county-level city, county, or banner otherwise; autonomous counties should omit the ethnic groups and the word "Autonomous" (e.g. Huanren Manchu Autonomous County → Huanren County) as long as no ambiguity is created by the short form.
- If the name of the parent county-level city or county is ambiguous, revert to 2A). If the prefecture-level city is not primary topic within the PRC, revert to 2B).
- If the English name is not unique even within the county-level division, use pinyin tone marks.
Occasionally, towns will have the same name as their parent division. "Town" must be used if the name of the town co-exists with subdistricts or townships of the same name in the same county-level division, i.e. if the town of XX and XX Township both exist in XY District. Otherwise, "Town" may be used only when: A) The parent division is a district, county-level city or prefecture-level city, i.e. [[Jiangzhou Town]] in Jiangzhou District and B) Apart from the town and its parent(s), no other settlements exist.
Subdistricts always disambiguate according to Step 2 above.
Established translations elsewhere
Here are some established translations, officially used in China or frequently employed in sinological literature.
When naming articles of expressways, highways, railways, railway stations, or airports in China, use the common English name if it can be determined, e.g. Karakoram Highway. Otherwise, follow these rules to determine the article title name:
For roadways, highways, expressways and railways whose names in Chinese consist of two- or three-character abbreviations (usually of terminal cities), do not simply adopt the pinyin version of the Chinese abbreviation as the English article name. Instead, spell out the full English name of each location mentioned in the Chinese abbreviation and connect the location names by an en dash (–).
- For the 宁芜铁路, use Nanjing–Wuhu Railway as the article name not, Ningwu Railway.
In this example, the character 宁, pinyin romanized as ning is a shorthand for the city of Nanjing, the eastern terminal on this rail line, and the character 芜, pinyin romanized as wu, is the shorthand for the other terminal city, Wuhu. Ningwu is an abbreviation for Nanjing–Wuhu.
The [full English spelling of terminus 1]–[full English spelling of terminus 2] [Expressway/Railway] article naming format is intended to identify expressways and railways with precision and avoid ambiguity. The Nanjing–Wuhu Railway from the example above, if written as Ningwu Railway in its article title, is confusingly similar to the Ningwu–Kelan and Ningwu–Jingle Railways.
Similarly, Nanfu Railway may refer to:
- Nanchuan–Fuling Railway, a railway in Chongqing built in 2012 or
- Nanping–Fuzhou Railway, a railway in Fujian built in 1959.
The Chinese abbreviated name, e.g. Ningwu Railway, should still be mentioned in the first sentence of the article as a secondary name of the expressway/railway, and should be made a redirect link to the article. This Chinese abbreviated name can be freely used in the article itself and in other articles. The rule above applies only to article names. Where there is ambiguity in the pinyin version of the Chinese abbreviated name, create a disambiguation page for the ambiguous name.
Please connect location names with an en dash (–) in the title instead of a hyphen. The en-dash stands for to or through. The Nanjing–Wuhu Railway, therefore means, the railway from Nanjing to Wuhu. For the sake of convenience of writers who cite the article using hyphens, please also create a redirect to the hyphenated version of the article name, e.g. Nanjing-Wuhu Railway.
Railways
- 京九铁路 – Beijing–Kowloon Railway not Jingjiu Railway
- 宝成铁路 – Baoji–Chengdu Railway not Baocheng Railway
- 皖赣铁路 – Anhui–Jiangxi Railway not Wan'gan Railway
- 精伊霍铁路 – Jinghe–Yining–Khorgos Railway not Jingyihuo Railway
Where the pinyin spelling of a location name differs from the official English spelling of the place name (especially in the case of non-Chinese place names) use the official English spelling.
- 滨州铁路 – Harbin–Manzhouli Railway not Haerbin-Manzhouli Railway
Use the location names mentioned in the Chinese abbreviation even if a location's actual name has changed.
- 临策铁路 – Linhe–Ceke Railway not Bayan Nur–Ceke Railway. The article's introduction should explain that the railway’s eastern terminal city, formerly known as Linhe, is now called Bayan Nur, but the railway name still uses Linhe.
Use the same naming format for China's high-speed railways
- 武广高速铁路 – Wuhan–Guangzhou high-speed railway not Wuguang high-speed railway
Exceptions to the full-spelling naming format:
Where the Chinese name is descriptive, translate the descriptive name:
- 北疆铁路 – Northern Xinjiang Railway not Beijiang Railway.
Where the Chinese abbreviation is no longer considered an abbreviation but a name into itself. This usually occurs when the abbreviated name has survived changes in the underlying names.
- 陇海铁路 – Longhai Railway not Longxi–Haizhou Railway because Longxi is no longer used to describe eastern Gansu Province and Haizhou is now part of Lianyungang
Roadways
For expressways that have a single numeral name, add this numeral name as a prefix to the expressway name in the article title. The numeral name and the expressway name should be separated by a space.
- 京沪高速公路 – G2 Beijing–Shanghai Expressway not Jinghu Expressway
- 大广高速公路 – G45 Daqing–Guangzhou Expressway not Daguang Expressway
- 沪芦高速公路 – S2 Shanghai–Luchaogang Expressway not Hulu Expressway
Note: some provincial-level expressways that cross provincial boundary lines carry different provincial highway numeral designations. In these cases, leave out the numeral name prefixes from the article title. For example:
- 申嘉湖高速公路 – Shanghai–Jiaxing–Huzhou Expressway for the expressway between Shanghai and Huzhou, in Jiangsu province, that is numbered S32 in Shanghai and S12 in Zhejiang, not S12/S32 Shenjiahu Expressway or Shenjiahu Expressway.
The Chinese abbreviated name for the expressway should be mentioned in the first sentence of the article as an abbreviated/secondary name of the expressway and should be made a redirect link to the article. Any numeral name designations should also be mentioned in the lede and redirects created as applicable.
For National Highways that are numbered simply follow the format {China National Highway [number]}:
- 国道102 – China National Highway 102
National Highways can be abbreviated with "G{no. of highway}", e.g. G105 as a redirect link for China National Highway 105.
Railway stations
Articles for railway stations in China should be named using the city's name (or in some cases the station's unique name, for example 沙坪坝站) followed by the English translation of the cardinal direction in the railway station name, if applicable (North, South etc.), and then [railway station]:
- 北京站 – Beijing railway station
- 北京西站 – Beijing West railway station
- 沙坪坝站 – Shapingba railway station
For stations with cardinal directions in their names, use the Pinyin version of the direction in the infobox, and mention it in the article's first sentence as secondary names; also create a redirect with this name. (Using Pinyin transliteration of cardinal directions has been the policy of China Railways since 2012; see zh:阳泉北站)
- 北京西站 – Beijing West railway station –
{{Infobox station| name = Beijingxi}}– Redirects from Beijingxi Railway Station, Beijing West (Currently also Beijing Xi Railway Station) - 北京南站 – Beijing South railway station –
{{Infobox station| name = Beijingnan}}– Redirects from Beijingnan Railway Station, Beijing South Station
Metro stations
All metro stations have their own English name, simply write the name that is already in use. However, consider creating a redirect for possible variants: for example, Zhenhua Road Station to Zhenhua Lu Station, or Nanjing East Road Station to East Nanjing Road Station.
Airports
Airport articles should have the city's name followed by the [airport's name] if applicable, followed by [International Airport] or [Airport] as applicable:
- 北京首都国际机场 – Beijing Capital International Airport
- 上海浦东国际机场 – Shanghai Pudong International Airport
- 广州白云国际机场 – Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport
For Chinese cuisine, use established terms that are understandable, particularly if such names are in daily use in the English-speaking world. Avoid Chinese abbreviations and pre-pinyin romanizations no longer in use of modern scholarship, except when quoting sources.
- Sichuan cuisine (川菜) not Szechwan or "Chuan cuisine"
- Cantonese cuisine (粤菜) not Yuecai or "Yue cuisine"
- General Tso's chicken not "General Zuo's chicken"
- Kung Pao chicken, not "Gongbao chicken"
- Dim sum not Dianxin
For the various Chinese operas or other performance arts, use an established translation, or, if that is not available (which is usual), use pinyin.
- Peking opera (京剧) not Jingju
- Pingju (评剧) not "Hebei Opera" (that term is also used for Hebei Bangzi 河北梆子)
And as always, work individual articles out on a case by case basis rather than let these conventions constrain you!
Languages or dialects
Chinese linguists classify local varieties of Chinese into dialect groups: Mandarin, Wu, Gan, Xiang, Min, Hakka, Yue and, in some classifications, Jin, Hui and Pinghua. They have also subdivided these into subgroups at various levels. While these groups are sometimes referred to as dialects, this has been criticized as a confusing departure from usual uses of the term elsewhere in the world. Some call them languages, on the grounds that they are mutually unintelligible, but this practice has been criticized both by those who feel it does not reflect the historical and cultural unity of Chinese, and by linguists who point to mutual unintelligibility within each of the groups.
Avoid explicitly naming the dialect groups as either languages or dialects. Simply use the name itself if there is no ambiguity. If there is, use "xxx Chinese" for top-level groups or "xxx Min", "xxx Mandarin" etc for lower-level divisions. For the local variety of a county or city, use "xxx dialect" unless another name is more common. In the event that the name of a variety is also the name used to refer to the people (e.g. Shanghainese), the variety should take precedence as the primary article name with a disambiguation link for the people.
Be aware that certain varieties of Chinese have multiple synonymous names in English, which can be alternately used to emphasize certain linguistic qualities. For example, Modern Standard Mandarin can be described as Standard Chinese to emphasize the fact that it is the standard language. The same language may be described as Modern Standard Mandarin to emphasize its difference from Standard Cantonese or Taiwanese Hokkien. It also may be called Modern Chinese to emphasize differences with Classical Chinese. Similarly, to call Taiwanese Hokkien simply by "Taiwanese" would de-emphasize its relationship to the broader Hokkien language group. The best name for each particular variety often depends on the article and its context.
The inclusion relationship between certain oft-confused groups and varieties is:
- Mandarin Chinese (北方话/官话)
- Standard Chinese (普通话)
- Taiwanese Mandarin (國語)
- Singaporean Mandarin (華語)
- Standard Chinese (普通话)
- Min Chinese (閩語)
- Southern Min (閩南語)
- Hokkien (福建話)
- Taiwanese Hokkien (台語)
- Hokkien (福建話)
- Southern Min (閩南語)
- Yue Chinese (粵語)
- Cantonese (廣東話)
The titles of Chinese entries should follow current academic conventions, which generally means Hanyu Pinyin without tone marks. Pinyin is spaced according to words, not characters; the correct form of the title is Zizhi Tongjian, not "Zi Zhi Tong Jian" or "ZiZhi TongJian". Exceptions include:
- When there is a clearly more popular form in English (such as Yangtze River)
- When the subject uses a non-pinyin form of their name that is adopted by secondary sources
When an entry is not in pinyin form, a redirect to the article from the pinyin form could be helpful. Redirects from old standards of romanization such as Wade–Giles are also useful, especially for articles of historical relevance. Use a template like {{lang|zh-Latn}} or {{transliteration|zh}} to tag romanized Chinese text and render it in italics.
To help you type pinyin, Wikipedia now has clickable characters with diacritics under the edit box; you can also use {{subst:pinyin|input}} which takes pinyin with tone numbers as input (e.g. Lv3shun4kou3) and converts it to the preferred form with diacritics (Lǚshùnkǒu). Other options include Pinyinput or Google Translate's phonetic reading function.
For information about the use of Cantonese romanization systems, see Romanization of Chinese.
Apostrophes
Apostrophes are crucial in both Pinyin and Wade–Giles. In Wade–Giles, an apostrophe is a part of the syllable, while in Pinyin it serves as a syllable delimiter. In Mandarin, the syllable delimiting apostrophe is referred to as a 隔音符号 (géyīn fúhào).
Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography gives the following rules for using the apostrophe in Hanyu Pinyin:
- Use when a syllable begins with a, o, or e, and follows another syllable: fāng'àn (方案), Cháng'é (嫦娥), Jiàn'ōu (建瓯).
- Do not use when the syllable starts a word: Àomén (澳門), or is separated by a hyphen: Rì-É Zhànzhēng (日俄战争)
- In the case of the erhua, omit the e in ér: tàngr (趟儿), gōngyuánr (公園兒), xiǎoháir (小孩儿).
In many cases, the apostrophe reduces ambiguity in word boundaries. Xī'ān]] (西安), for example, might be interpreted as a single syllable xiān (先) if the apostrophe and the tones were not present. Without the apostrophe, fāng'àn (方案) could be confused with fǎngǎn (反感). (Some writers, such as the Library of Congress, write fǎn'gǎn, but this reading is already implied in the absence of the apostrophe- for this reason, Henan Province isn't allowed to use an apostrophe between He and nan despite the technical plausibility of some other word spelled "hen'an") Note that not every required apostrophe reduces ambiguity, as in Tiān'é (天峨) despite the fact that tia (any tone) is not the Mandarin pronunciation for any character.
Hyphenation
In pinyin, hyphens are mainly used for the conjunction of independent words, abbreviated compounds (lüèyǔ), and four-character idioms, including double reduplication of the schema AA-BB. Character sequences for words with a single meaning, often consisting of two characters, seldom three, are written without intervening hyphen or space. This also holds for compound words combining two words to one meaning: hǎifēng (simplified Chinese: 海风; traditional Chinese: 海風, sea breeze).
Summary from the Library of Congress:
- Join, without hyphen or space, multi-character proper nouns, for example:
- Person's name
- Family/clan name (姓)
- Given name (名)
- Courtesy name (字)
- Pseudonym
- Buddhist name
- Placename
- But separate the following from the placename proper:
- Jurisdictional name, such as shì (市, 'city')
- Topographical name, such as shān (山, 'mountain')
- But separate the following from the placename proper:
- Era name
- Ethnic group name
- Religion name
- Language name
- Person's name
Names not transliterated with Hanyu Pinyin will often have hyphenation or spacing between syllables, for example Kwok Fu-shing, Tsai Ing-wen, and Mong Kok.