Chinese personal name variation in medical publications: Implications for information retrieval

摘要

In recent months I received several reprint requests addressing me variously as Dr. Tsung, Dr. Cheng or Dr. Zheng, the last being the pinyin transliteration of Cheng. It is obvious that confusion with Chinese personal names persists, despite my numerous attempts in clarifying the situation over the years [1-9]. In China, the customary way of writing one's name is surname ("honorable surname") first followed by the given name, just as in the telephone directory. This is a reversal of a Western name. The reason behind this tradition is that, in Chinese culture, emphasis is placed on the revering the ancestors, and part of this process means that people honor their ancestors by placing the family names ahead of the given names [10]. Thus the name of the founding father of the People's Republic of China is Mao Tse Tung (now spelled Mao Zedong). This is contrary to the Western custom of first name first and last name last. Thus, not infrequently, there would be articles in American newspapers, magazines or journals in which Mao would be addressed as Mr. Tung or Mr. Zedong, thus creating confusion.