Significance of names...... again.

[Lina]

No: HPFGUIDX 52982

"Devika <devika at sas.upenn.edu>" <devika at sas.upenn.edu> wrote: 
> I think that JKR was just trying to give her characters the names 
> that people of similar descent might have in the real world.  The 
> same thing probably applies to Cho Chang, IMO.

I am inclined to agree. Even in the Chinese translation (basing this off of the
mainland simplified version), Cho's name is treated as something not apart from
the others, written as all of the others are (e.g. Qiu-Zhang, Hali-Bote [Harry
Potter]...). As for her name, it's translated as Qiu Zhang (Autumn
Really-overused-surname), which, to me, sounds a bit odd (uneven, mainly), but
her name sounded odd to me before. (^^; Actually, at first I was surprised with
the using of "Zhang" instead of "Chang" (another common surname), which I
suppose was done in assumption that, as her first uses a Wade-Giles-spelled
name (now used only overseas [less and less] and in Taiwan), the surname would
as well; I was also momentarily surprised at the use of a Western-style name
[First-Last instead of the normal LastFirst), but she is, of course, a Western
character in a Western book, regardless of whether or not she is a huayi (of
Chinese descent). 

And that was too long a ramble on a simple name. Please forgive me. 


Lina

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