Comments on: The Atlas of True Names http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2009/01/04/the-atlas-of-true-names.html High-minded, fanatically malthusian perspectives Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:09:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: tdaxp http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2009/01/04/the-atlas-of-true-names.html/comment-page-1#comment-213687 tdaxp Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:07:28 +0000 http://www.tdaxp.com/?p=6683#comment-213687 That would be fascinating! Siberia (西伯利亞) literally means West-Sire-Profit-Asia, but I guess you could translate it as "Western Lord's Profitable Asia." Which almost makes sense! :-) South Dakota becomes "South Quick Section He State" - harder to make sense of. America is indeed Beautiful Country in Chinese (美国), though in Japanese it is 米国, or Rice-Country! zen picked up a link to this page [1], by the way. [1] http://zenpundit.com/?p=2979 That would be fascinating!

Siberia (西伯利亞) literally means West-Sire-Profit-Asia, but I guess you could translate it as “Western Lord’s Profitable Asia.”

Which almost makes sense! :-)

South Dakota becomes “South Quick Section He State” – harder to make sense of.

America is indeed Beautiful Country in Chinese (美国), though in Japanese it is 米国, or Rice-Country!

zen picked up a link to this page [1], by the way.

[1] http://zenpundit.com/?p=2979

]]> By: Michael http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2009/01/04/the-atlas-of-true-names.html/comment-page-1#comment-213676 Michael Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:46:25 +0000 http://www.tdaxp.com/?p=6683#comment-213676 A variant of this that would also be neat--an atlas of Mandarin place names for different parts of the world literally translated into English. From what I gather, writing non-Chinese names in Chinese is typically done by putting Chinese words together that sound vaguely like the syllables in the original word. As such, America becomes "May Gua" or "beautiful nation". England becomes "Ying Gua" (Brave Nation) and so on. It would also be interesting to see what those names become had different tones been chosen:P A variant of this that would also be neat–an atlas of Mandarin place names for different parts of the world literally translated into English.

From what I gather, writing non-Chinese names in Chinese is typically done by putting Chinese words together that sound vaguely like the syllables in the original word. As such, America becomes “May Gua” or “beautiful nation”. England becomes “Ying Gua” (Brave Nation) and so on. It would also be interesting to see what those names become had different tones been chosen:P

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