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Let’s Have More Fun With Transliteration!

Where did Cardinal Joseph Zen, 陳日君, Hong Kong’s top Catholic, get the spelling of his family name?  It causes no end of hilarity to some more easily amused Westerners, who associate it with Buddhist meditation.  It is, however, a very common name in Hong Kong, and is usually presented in English as Chan.

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In Pinyin – the main contemporary system for rendering Mandarin in the western alphabet – ‘zen’ would represent a sound like ‘dzun’ (rhyming with run).  In Pinyin, the Hong Kong name Chan is rendered ‘chen’ and pronounced something like ‘jun’ (ditto), which almost brings us to ‘dzun’.  The Hemlock theory is that Shanghai-born Cardinal Zen’s parents or teachers were using some sort of proto-Pinyin when they Romanized his family name.

Down in Singapore and Malaysia, where many Chinese are of Fujianese descent, the transliteration of Hokkien pronunciation leaves many Chans/Chens styling themselves Tan.  In Vietnam, where nearly everyone has a Chinese family name, there is a mysterious absence of Chans, Chens, Tans or even Zens, but they have a lot of Trans.

Of course, Cardinal Zen is Romanized in more ways than one.  His English is a bit rough, but he chats away in Italian and Latin with ease.  A big believer in universal suffrage, he can take part in the election of the Pope, because he is a member of the College of Cardinals – the Vatican’s version of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Election Committee.  The main difference between the two bodies is that, unlike the Church of Rome’s conclave, Hong Kong’s 800-strong electoral college admits women, Protestants and communists.