David Johnston <rgorman@telusplanet.net> wrote:

OK, I've finally got to say it about those Chinese names.  Deliberately 
spelling a name however the heck you want to is not the same thing as 
just getting it wrong.  A case in point is "Serenity".  It's actually 
spelled "Selenity".  Nobody spells it that way, except in Japan because
people like "Serenity" better as a name, even though the original 
spelling contains a double edged pun on the whole Moon concept.

And in a case like that, where the name is obviously based on an English
word, I don't have a problem with it. But in other cases, when people
get the names wrong I have no way of knowing whether they're
deliberately changing them or they think the names they're using *are*
correct because they've seen them used in fanfics.

Might I suggest, then, that people who deliberately alter the names of
characters indicate this in their authors' notes so nobody corrects them
thinking it's a mistake? That's not hard to do. "In this story, the name
Shan Pu will be changed to 'Xian Pu' because I think the latter name
looks cooler. Similarly, Nodoka's name will be changed to 'Nodaka,' and
Ranma's will be changed to 'John.'" Etc. etc.


Gary Kleppe (who will be known as "Bubba Leroy Smith" next time he
appears in a fic.... ^_^) http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html