Re:Lee Kuan Yew on Malta
by eynsham on Saturday January 20, 2024 @06:48PM
(#39073793)
Well, Lee Kuan Yew’s surname is indeed Lee, but Chinese names are sometimes written with the surname at the end in other languages: thus C.K. Tang, Wen Ho Lee, and so on. And, indeed, if one were also discussing the times of Lee Hsien Loong, it would be perfectly reasonable to write of ‘Kuan Yew’s times’. But people writing of ‘Yew’s times[sic]’ do betray how little they’ve read about Singapore.
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Re:Lee Kuan Yew on Malta
by delta_p_delta_x on Saturday January 20, 2024 @10:14PM
(#39075179)
> Chinese names are sometimes written with the surname at the end in other languages, thus C.K. Tang, Wen Ho Lee
This is an Anglicisation through and through. In Mandarin Chinese and most Chinese dialects (and Korean, for the record), the surname comes first.
XI Jinping
MAO Tse-tung
LEE Kuan Yew
TSAI Ying-Wen
HUANG Jen-Hsun
KIM Jong-un
BAN Ki-moon
If the person has a European first name, then it comes before the surname—Lisa Su, for instance. Lee Kuan Yew himself went by 'Harry Lee Kuan Yew' before he went into politics and he dropped the 'Harry'.
> sometimes…in other languages