Jonathan Taylor writes:
Following the nomination of Utah Governor Jon Huntsman (R) as U.S. ambassador to China, two posts on Evan Osnos’s “Letter From China” blog have some great notes (with reader assists) on the conventions in China for rendering foreign ambassadors’ names, by mere transliteration and/or a devised “Chinese name.” (Chinese characters TK, apparently.) Osnos writes, “I’ve received questions about whether I have a Chinese name. Answer: Ou Yiwen, stamped on me by early Chinese teachers. Like a lot of foreigners’ names in Chinese, it sounds a bit fancy—roughly akin to meeting a Chinese journalist in the U.S. who has taken the name Aloysius Sunbonnet or something.”