Writing
Chinese names are written in Chinese characters. These originated from the Shang oracle bone script. The modern forms were largely established by the time of the Han dynasty's clerical script, but continued to develop. As new styles of calligraphy arose, variant characters sometimes entered the mainstream; likewise, some were political decisions whose success depended on the fate of their promulgators.
The two main modern forms are the simplified characters developed during the 1950s by the People's Republic of China and the traditional characters employed by the Republic of China, Hong Kong, and much of the Chinese diaspora. For example, a person who writes his name as 张伟 in a foreign country might be expected to come from mainland China or Singapore, while a 張偉 – the same name in traditional characters – might be asked if he or his family is originally from Taiwan or Hong Kong. When in Chinese speaking countries, the local variant of characters are used.
Chinese names in other East Asian countries have been influenced by the adoption of Hangul in Korea during the 1890s; the Japanese script reform beginning in 1900 and expanded after 1946 into the modern shinjitai; and the adoption of the Portuguese-based Quốc Ngữ script for Vietnamese after World War I.
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Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“...Often the accurate answer to a usage question begins, “It depends.” And what it depends on most often is where you are, who you are, who your listeners or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is.”
—Kenneth G. Wilson (b. 1923)
“Romance reading and writing might be seen ... as a collectively elaborated female ritual through which women explore the consequences of their common social condition as the appendages of men and attempt to imagine a more perfect state where all the needs they so intensely feel and accept as given would be adequately addressed.”
—Janice A. Radway (b. 1949)
“When you are writing before there is an audience anything written is as important as any other thing and you cherish anything and everything that you have written. After the audience begins, naturally they create something that is they create you, and so not everything is so important, something is more important than another thing ...”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)