Tieguanyin, Tik Koon Yam, Tik Kuan Yin.
Why are there so many different spellings of names?
In the late 19th century, the popular convention was the Wades-Giles spelling and for most of the 20th century it was the prevalent spelling in the western world.
That is why there are far more writings using “Sun Yat-Sun” compared to “Sun Zhongshan” in the English language.
The Wades-Giles convention was helpful in the past, largely because it was the only widespread system at that time. Though it had mass appeal, the fact remains that it was devised by non-native Chinese speakers.
Many of the spellings may have made it easy for non-native speakers to pronounce but it is virtually unrecognizable by native speakers.
Consider Chiang Kai-Shek versus Jiang Jieshi or Chien-lung versus Qian Long. For good measure, to prove there is no gender bias, we
The Romanization used to compare is Hanyu Pinyin, a system of phonetics that was developed in the 50s in China to aid new learners to the language learn to pronounce the Chinese characters.
With the advent of Pinyin, we have a “proper” system that makes sense to native speakers of the language. Though it was slow to gain traction, South-East Asia migrant Chinese such as Malaysia and Singapore adapted in the 80s while even Taiwan eventually adopted Hanyu Pinyin in 2009.
Beyond Romanization of Mandarin Chinese, there are also the local dialects, particularly Cantonese which is also the official language of Hong Kong as well as the local dialect of Guangzhou, one of the top migrant communities.
For example Tik Koon Yam would be the Cantonese Romanization viz-a-viz the Pinyin version of Tieguanyin.
Is there a ‘correct’ spelling?
There are some who suggests that since its Romanization, there is no ‘correct spelling’.
That I disagree. In the past, there was only the Wades-Giles system, one which is quite arbitrary but since the advent of Hanyu Pinyin, there is a near universal consensus among native Chinese speakers all over the world.
Rather than to arbitrarily pick one that captures our fancy why not use the spellings that are now getting recognized officially?
This would help in promoting tea cultures all over the world, particularly when the outside world is getting exposed to an increasingly larger range of Chinese teas.
Longjing, Lungching, Lungjing- all these refer to the same tea.
Whereas Mi Lan Xiang (米兰香), Mei Lan Xiang (梅兰香), Mi Lan Xiang 蜜兰香 are all different teas.
Having a proper standardized system of spelling helps in reducing the confusion.
Practical Difficulties
Nevertheless, this is not something that can happen overnight.
For example, though “wulong” is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling for oolong, many sites like ours continue to use “oolong”, if for no other reason, to help in the world of searches. “Oolong” appears far more often in searches than “wulong”
*Yes the long arm of Google is undeniable*
There is also the matter of capitalization. In Pinyin there are no capital letters but since Romanization is predominantly for names anyway and names generally occur in capital letters, mostly we use “Longjing” instead of “longjing”.
There are also instances when the Chinese word starts with a vowel and it can be confusing. For example Puer is made up of 2 separate words- “pu” and “er”. Spelling it “Pu-er” or “PuEr” would help in clearing the confusion.
As would for names such as “WuSe” which might otherwise be pronounced as rhyming with “muse” instead of “Wu Se”.
That aside, narrowing down the Romanization to Pinyin does make simplify matters. Getting a concurrence though, may take a little more time.
