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<p>[QUOTE="The Eidolon, post: 8412645, member: 102103"]It's a bit complicated, but <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emperors_of_the_Qing_dynasty" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emperors_of_the_Qing_dynasty" rel="nofollow">this Wikipedia page</a> gives a good start for the Qing names.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Era name is what you would generally want on coins, not the Emperor's personal name or the posthumous name. For example, the last Emperor was named Puyi, but his era name was Xuantong. Japan has something very similar. For example, Emperor Hirohito has the era name "Showa" (昭和). Sometimes the Emperor could declare a new era to commemorate an important event or to try and get away from an unlucky one. For example, Emperor Genmei of Japan reigned from 704-717, and had 3 different era names in that short time. One of them was named Wado (和銅) = "Japanese copper" to celebrate the discovery of indigenous Japanese copper sources. (Sorry, I know this has wandered a bit off-topic. I was a Japanese major as well as an engineer long ago!)</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, as for the spelling, there are two mayor systems for representing Chinese in Western alphabets. The dominant one now is Pinyin, which uses mostly a one-for-one representation for sounds, but "borrows" some letters for sounds completely different from their sounds in English. So Q = ch sound, X = sh sound, C = ts sound etc. An older but still valid system is called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade–Giles" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade–Giles" rel="nofollow">Wade-Giles</a>. It was commonly used by Western scholars before the Communist Era, but a few people still prefer it. It's easy to spot because it uses apostrophes to distinguish voiced and unvoiced consonants. Here's <a href="http://www.romanization.com/emperors/ming.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.romanization.com/emperors/ming.html" rel="nofollow">a page</a> which shows the conversions for the Ming Emperors. 天啟 = Tianqi = T'ien-ch'i, for example. And <a href="https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/about/directory/departments/eastasia/find/wade-giles-pinyin-conversion-table/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/about/directory/departments/eastasia/find/wade-giles-pinyin-conversion-table/" rel="nofollow">here's a general-purpose list</a> showing how to convert letter clusters between the two systems. For people who grew up in Taiwan, there's a separate system used to spell out characters. It's a phonetic alphabet similar to Hiragana in Japanese which can be written above or instead of characters to show the pronunciations. It's commonly called "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo" rel="nofollow">bopomofo</a>" or Zhuyin. People who grew up with that system often have trouble with typing characters on a Western keyboard in Pinyin. My wife, who is a native speaker, still needs help from me or the kids to spell characters in Pinyin sometimes because she's not used to it.</p><p>There's also the complicated issue of traditional vs. simplified characters...[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="The Eidolon, post: 8412645, member: 102103"]It's a bit complicated, but [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emperors_of_the_Qing_dynasty']this Wikipedia page[/URL] gives a good start for the Qing names. The Era name is what you would generally want on coins, not the Emperor's personal name or the posthumous name. For example, the last Emperor was named Puyi, but his era name was Xuantong. Japan has something very similar. For example, Emperor Hirohito has the era name "Showa" (昭和). Sometimes the Emperor could declare a new era to commemorate an important event or to try and get away from an unlucky one. For example, Emperor Genmei of Japan reigned from 704-717, and had 3 different era names in that short time. One of them was named Wado (和銅) = "Japanese copper" to celebrate the discovery of indigenous Japanese copper sources. (Sorry, I know this has wandered a bit off-topic. I was a Japanese major as well as an engineer long ago!) Anyway, as for the spelling, there are two mayor systems for representing Chinese in Western alphabets. The dominant one now is Pinyin, which uses mostly a one-for-one representation for sounds, but "borrows" some letters for sounds completely different from their sounds in English. So Q = ch sound, X = sh sound, C = ts sound etc. An older but still valid system is called [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade–Giles']Wade-Giles[/URL]. It was commonly used by Western scholars before the Communist Era, but a few people still prefer it. It's easy to spot because it uses apostrophes to distinguish voiced and unvoiced consonants. Here's [URL='http://www.romanization.com/emperors/ming.html']a page[/URL] which shows the conversions for the Ming Emperors. 天啟 = Tianqi = T'ien-ch'i, for example. And [URL='https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/about/directory/departments/eastasia/find/wade-giles-pinyin-conversion-table/']here's a general-purpose list[/URL] showing how to convert letter clusters between the two systems. For people who grew up in Taiwan, there's a separate system used to spell out characters. It's a phonetic alphabet similar to Hiragana in Japanese which can be written above or instead of characters to show the pronunciations. It's commonly called "[URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo']bopomofo[/URL]" or Zhuyin. People who grew up with that system often have trouble with typing characters on a Western keyboard in Pinyin. My wife, who is a native speaker, still needs help from me or the kids to spell characters in Pinyin sometimes because she's not used to it. There's also the complicated issue of traditional vs. simplified characters...[/QUOTE]
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