Why Is My Name Spelled Hsieh? The Romanization Systems

If your family name appears as Hsieh (謝), Chang (張) or Tsai (蔡) on a passport, that spelling comes from one of several systems. Chinese characters have no letters, so any spelling is one system's way of setting a Mandarin sound down in the Latin alphabet. This page explains what each system is and how to read them side by side.

The four systems

Wade-Giles

Thomas Wade's system goes back to 1859, and Herbert Giles revised it in 1892. An apostrophe marks aspiration, as in Ts'ai (cài ㄘㄞˋ), while hs- writes the sound that Hanyu Pinyin spells x-, as in Hsieh (xiè ㄒㄧㄝˋ). Spellings on older passports often follow Wade-Giles.

Tongyong Pinyin

Introduced by Yu Bor-chuan in 1998, it was the official romanization of Mandarin in Taiwan from 2002 to 2008. It writes xiè (ㄒㄧㄝˋ) as Sie and zhāng (ㄓㄤ) as Jhang.

Hanyu Pinyin

The system this site's lessons use for Mandarin. It writes the sounds in Hsieh, Ch'iu and Chang as xiè (ㄒㄧㄝˋ), qiū (ㄑㄧㄡ) and zhāng (ㄓㄤ).

MPS II (Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II)

In Chinese, 國語注音符號第二式 (Zhuyin Fuhao Second Form). It appears among the four systems in the Bureau of Consular Affairs' table of passport spellings.

How a passport spelling is chosen

The Bureau of Consular Affairs (領事事務局) publishes a passport name spelling table (護照外文姓名拼音對照表) that sets the four systems above side by side, ordered by Zhuyin syllable. The Bureau calls the table a reference only.

For a first passport, the Bureau's notes say the name is transliterated character by character from the natural-language readings that Taiwan's established language communities use, and point to the Ministry of Education's Hokkien and Hakka dictionaries for those readings. Anyone who has held a passport before may request one change of foreign name if the spelling does not match the Mandarin reading of the Chinese name.

So a spelling on a document may follow a different system, or a different reading of the character, from the one a pinyin dictionary gives today.

Common surnames across the systems

Read across a row to see a single character in all four spellings. Where a surname has a page, the character links to it.

Character	Zhuyin	Hanyu Pinyin	Wade-Giles	Tongyong	MPS II
謝	ㄒㄧㄝˋ	xiè	Hsieh	Sie	Shie
徐	ㄒㄩˊ	xú	Hsü	Syu	Shiu
周	ㄓㄡ	zhōu	Chou	Jhou	Jou
蔡	ㄘㄞˋ	cài	Ts'ai	Cai	Tsai
江	ㄐㄧㄤ	jiāng	Chiang	Jiang	Jiang
張	ㄓㄤ	zhāng	Chang	Jhang	Jang
陳	ㄔㄣˊ	chén	Ch'en	Chen	Chen
林	ㄌㄧㄣˊ	lín	Lin	Lin	Lin
黃	ㄏㄨㄤˊ	huáng	Huang	Huang	Huang
劉	ㄌㄧㄡˊ	liú	Liu	Liou	Liou
楊	ㄧㄤˊ	yáng	Yang	Yang	Yang
鄭	ㄓㄥˋ	zhèng	Cheng	Jheng	Jeng
郭	ㄍㄨㄛ	guō	Kuo	Guo	Guo
何	ㄏㄜˊ	hé	Ho	He	He
呂	ㄌㄩˇ	lǚ	Lü	Lyu	Liu
吳	ㄨˊ	wú	Wu	Wu	Wu
邱	ㄑㄧㄡ	qiū	Ch'iu	Ciou	Chiou
王	ㄨㄤˊ	wáng	Wang	Wang	Wang
李	ㄌㄧˇ	lǐ	Li	Li	Li
魏	ㄨㄟˋ	wèi	Wei	Wei	Wei
孫	ㄙㄨㄣ	sūn	Sun	Sun	Sun
潘	ㄆㄢ	pān	P'an	Pan	Pan
鄧	ㄉㄥˋ	dèng	Teng	Deng	Deng
蕭	ㄒㄧㄠ	xiāo	Hsiao	Siao	Shiau

Some characters share a single Wade-Giles spelling, such as 許 and 徐 (both Hsu), so a spelling on its own does not tell you which character it stands for. Check the character on the document first; the surname directory lists every character that shares a spelling.

Sources: Bureau of Consular Affairs, 護照外文姓名拼音對照表 (boca.gov.tw); Wikipedia, "Romanization of Chinese"; the Tongyong comparison chart at pinyin.info.