OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Has anyone else noticed that the ITTF have started telescoping the names of some (South) Korean players?
For instance, on official results/press releases etc, Oh Sang Eun is now Oh Sangeun, Kim Kyung Ah is now Kim Kyungah, Ryu Seung Min is Ryu Seungmin and just today I noticed that Joo Se Hyuk has become Joo Saehyuk (with an 'a').
Meanwhile other Korean names seem to be unchanged (Kim Jung Hoon, Jung Young Sik etc).

Anyone know why this is?

I believe it's to make sure people pronounce their names properly with less emphasis on their first name (since it's last middle then first)

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There are too many ways to romanize Korean. Since it is a first name, there prolly isn't much a big deal about making one word out of the mostly 2 sounds Koreans have for a first name. However, in Korea, when they romanize names, they usuall make each sound a separate works, like Oh, Sang Uhn... When you speak someone's name, you have no way to know whether it is one or two words, so big deal. The bigger issue is how do you romanize the name and still make it sound the same.

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Ah, so thats the reason for Wang Liqin and Zhang Jike also; pronounciation?

I'm not sure how these players get their English names in the first place. I bet it's based on the pronunciation in their language.

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it is, since hangul is phonetic, so ㄹ= l/r and ㅠ=yu so put them together and you get ryu

with Oh Sangeun, it's 오상은, the ㅇis silent when in front of a vowel, ㅗ is an O sound like "Oh" (versus ㅓ, which is an eo sound using "e' first then the "o"), ㅅis sh/s depending on the vowel (with an "a" it's s), etc etc

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Yes, same thing with Chinese names.

So ITTF can not just go and "change" players name, as these phonetic/English version of the players name are in they official documents like passports. I have not seen a Japanese or Korean passport, but most Asian passports I saw have they English phonetic names too.

So you can't just go add a "A" in JSH's name.... this is weird.

Regarding Zhang Jike or Zhang Ji Ke. In English do you say Jean Pierre or Jeanpierre?

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Not sure how it is supposed to be done for Korean, but for Chinese, different regions follow different rules of romanization.

For most Chinese of the modern era, we don't have middle names. What we have is a one-to-two-character first or given name. For Mainland China, it is customary to write the two characters together with no space between when expressed in English, e.g. Wang Liqin. For Taiwan, they separate the two characters with a dash as in Chuang Chih-yuan. For Hong Kong, the two characters are separated by a space, like Leung Chu Yan.

And before you wonder, China, Singapore, and Malaysia all use the transcription system 漢語拼音(Hanyu Pinyin, often shortened as Pinyin) with some minor differences to express Chinese characters as Latin script. Taiwan has also recently adopted the Pinyin system. Prior to that, they used the Wade-Giles system. Hong Kong, on the other hand, adopts the Eitel/Dyer-Ball system, again with some modifications.

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BTY Viscaria - 91g
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+ Hexer HD 2.1 Red - 49.3g(68.5g 〃 〃)
= 184.8g

For cultures within the Sinosphere, the last name or surname of a person is of utmost importance in personal identification. It is regarded as a symbol for one's family tree. Therefore, it is always written first.

Problem arises when the (far) east meets west. The ITTF has followed the standard rules of putting last name first in capital letters to minimize confusions. But the Chinese government has expressed they wanted something better than that.

_________________
BTY Viscaria - 91g
+ Neo H3 2.15 Blk - 44.5g(55.3g uncut bare)
+ Hexer HD 2.1 Red - 49.3g(68.5g 〃 〃)
= 184.8g

Koreans get their name system from Chinese. Many of the old school Koreans still use thousands and thousands of Chinese characters to represent the Sino-Korean words in newspapers and many Koreans have had to literally put in 10,000 hours mastering a few thpusand basic Chinese characters. Koreans are just about identical in naming. Family name of one sound, first name of 1-2 sounds. PERIOD.

How ITTF represents this, I could still vomit. They are not using the Korean or Chinese characters, so any system they use will be insufficient. Big Deal, but fun to talk about.

Anyone want some fun can start to study Korean and try to suceed at it. You will likely drown a million times before you become proficient. Secret to learning Korean... Have a reallly hard head and an average brain.

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The Chinese version of ITTF does use Chinese characters for players' names where applicable. Though its accuracy leaves much to be desired. Say Lee Sang Su of South Korea, the proper Han characters(漢字, which is how it is commonly referred to in other languages) should be 李尚洙, but ITTF China and thus the Chinese media have settled on 李相秀, a perfect example of "lost in transliteration."

The entire romanization mess does have one advantage. One can pick up a lot of clues about a player just by the transcription, such as what political region or country or country of birth that particular player comes from, e.g. Chan Kazuhiro(張一博) was from China. Still, some are harder to tell, like Yoshida Kaii(吉田海偉) had his Chinese last name Song(宋) changed to that of his coach when he tagged along with him to Japan at age 15. Dang Yeseo(唐汭序) and Seo Hajung(石賀淨) both had their names changed from 唐娜 and 石磊.

Frankly, even with the advance of the Unicode support brought about by recent operating systems, typing in languages other than English with an alphanumeric keyboard is still a formidable undertaking for the non-tech-savvy.

_________________
BTY Viscaria - 91g
+ Neo H3 2.15 Blk - 44.5g(55.3g uncut bare)
+ Hexer HD 2.1 Red - 49.3g(68.5g 〃 〃)
= 184.8g

Well, zzzuppp, ITTF just likes to change things constantly.
It is called "obsessive-compulsive disorder", so they just have to do it.

People were pronouncing it incorrectly before, they used to call Joo Se Hyuk's first name by "hyuk" which is incorrect, its meant to be "Sehyuk", same with Oh Sang Eun.

And yes, the ITTF are a bunch of OCD freaks

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perhaps my mom needs to teach me I was too lazy before now I'm interested

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