Félicité Jean-David François Laurent => FELICITEJEANDAVIDFRANCO
Linking different bank cards on one app was impossible for example because my name was butchered in different was by the system and mismatched.
I'm never able to enter systems who ask for name as part of authentification, it's impossible to remember how my name was altered for each thing I registered.
As additional fun, many app or services are not accessible or crash if you are not a Chinese citizen with Chinese id, even if you have a long term resident permit.
Administrative life in China just sucks in general if you don't fit the norm. It really made me think using name as part of any authentification/login process is harmful because it's never gonna be handled well by programs. Let me login with my passport number and phone number for example, they are designed to be handled by such systems.
People named Null also have a hard time: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160325-the-names-that-brea...
Strong type systems do help.
I have recently had a problem where my Internet line stopped working. Customer service called me and told me it's because my name has a hyphen and their system can't process hyphens. When I talked with them more, it sounds like China Telecom's IT department made some kind of system change that made hyphens impossible to process in names. That sucked, not sure why they would do that when it was perfectly fine before. There may or may not have been a good reason for it from their side, I obviously didn't get to talk with anyone in their IT department about it. So now my China Telecom account has my name all mashed up with no spaces and no hyphens. But banks I'm still OK for some reason.
I'm curious why some people have certain experiences that I don't share. We're all using the same service and system. I'm waiting one day for some Chinese bank IT employee to finally write up a really weird debugging story and submit it to HN for discussion. It would be good to know what's up.
Or... it could be a bank employee's user error too, I suppose.
Initially, when I applied for a bank account under the name of "Jack Middle Chen," they listed my name as "Jackmiddlechen." Just one name, like Cher. Chinese names don't have spaces so it made sense, but this of course made it impossible for me to pay online, where they require family and surnames separately.
So I went back and asked them to differentiate between my first, middle and last names, so they added spaces, without changing the order. So my name became "Jack Middle Chen," where "Jack" was my last name and "Middle Chen" was my first name.
So I went back and asked them to change the order, because it's obviously wrong. So they changed my name to "Chen Middle Jack." Where Chen is now my correct family name, but my new first name is now "Middle Jack."
So I went back and asked them to change my first name to "Jack" because "Middle" is my middle name. But of course, Chinese don't have middle names so they don't have a field for that. So my first name then became "Jack Middle." Which is fine.
The issue is that my names now all had spaces. Chinese names don't have spaces, as mentioned, so to separate my alpha numeric names, they literally had to insert the space character into my name. So when I try to shop online, my name doesn't match because my official registered name has several space character somewhere in there, encoded in a weird way.
So at this point, I go back and try to clarify what my name actually is in their records. I tell them just to make it look exactly like my passport. So now my name is "JACK MIDDLE CHEN," all caps. I still have no idea what my first name and last name is but I've given up shopping online with this card, and since it matches my passport exactly, I can use it at the bank, which is good enough for me.
*Name altered for anonymity
No. You can choose a Chinese name (or have one chosen for you) to make life easier for your Chinese friends and colleagues, but your bank account etc. will use your real name.
The name on your bank account is likely to be on of the below, depending on which bank you use, and what type of day the teller is having:
SURNAMEFORENAME
FORENAMESURNAME
FORENAMEMIDDLESURNAME
And you need to know what it is, because without the correct name it's impossible to receive inbound bank transfers, or to link your bank card with WeChat/AliPay. Your name is not usually printed on your bank card, which you are given as soon as you open the account.
A daily use of ateji is for abbreviations for country:
仏 fu, 仏蘭西, France 英 ei from 英吉利, England 米 from 亜米利加, America 露 from 露西亞, Russia
One that uses katakana: ソ from ソビエト連邦, Soviet Union
Usage: 米ドル bei doru, US dollar, 英国 United Kingdom
米 is used for America because 亜 was already an abbreviation for 亜細亜, Asia.
Successfully have name in latin characters with bank (CCB & CMB & Citi) and it links to Wepay and Alipay.
Done Chinese name. Work permit has Chinese name (Hanzi) and that's linked to passport. Can be used to open an account (CB).
Though it's so much easier now than a decade ago.
Taiwan and the other Chinese speaking places is where all the weird romanizations come from.
If you're Chinese and find yourself in the West, you spell your name in Pinyin. You don't have to invent a new name unless you want to (I know a Chinese person who did this, but it was for social reasons, not necessity.)
On the flip side, you definitely should invent a new name if you're from the West and want to live in China for a extended period of time, or you'll find that life can be very painful. Sometimes you can even find a direct translation, e.g. David => 大卫 (Da Wei).
I rarely used mine while living in Beijing for 10 years.
I'm from a country with the Cyrillic alphabet, and somewhere in 2012 or so they decided to change the romanization rules. When I renewed my passport, I became e.g. VASILII MAIAKOVSKII instead of VASILIY MAYAKOVSKY. Endless grief in China. There is literally no way to certify you are you if your passport number has changed (never ever happens with Chinese ID) and your name has changed (never ever happens with Chinese names). In the end, it was so much trouble that I had to change the passport again and supply a special letter to the Consul asking to romanize my name in the old way.
I have a German friend with Ö in their name which is sometimes written by Chinese staff as "O", but in some German documents it's transcribed as "OE" so he has one bank account with O and one with OE, and of course it never works right. Also, almost no Chinese system would allow to input Ö, and a few times it changes it to "Ö"...
Even worse is if you try to apply for a bank account in China as a foreigner. Their systems are designed for 2-4 character logogram names, so if you are using a 15-30 character alpha numeric name, then good luck. My English name attached to my bank account has gone through a half dozen permutations over the years, with spaces, without spaces, in the wrong order, etc. I've given up trying to fix it and now am content with a name that is not quite my name, but is close enough to pass passport checks when I go to the bank.