Could someone explain the logic behind Confucius’ English naming?
Lao Zi -> Lao Tzu
Sun Zi -> Sun Tzu
Kong Zi -> Confucius
In: Other
It has to due with those early transliterations/romanizations (attempting to write words from other languages with our Latin alphabet) being firmly cemented in the West over centuries.The new Pinyin romanization system for Chinese is just that, new; created and adopted in its current modern form under the People’s Republic of China after the Communists won the civil war against the Nationalist Goumindang (old transliteration Koumintang). Even the Chinese were using one of the old styles of Chinese romanization (Wade-Giles) for texts they translated into English for decades, e.g. using Mao Tse-Tung in favour of Mao Zedong.
These early romanizations are so entrenched in Western culture it would take some effort to change it. For example, in the Romance languages, like Spanish and French, they still call the Chinese capital Beijing Peking. Peking being an old transliteration of Beijing. Some of the new Pinyin romanizations might make their way to being the default spellings in the future. I’ve been seeing this phenomenon more recently in the case of the more accurate Chinggis Khan being used instead of the old Ghengis Khan.
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