Chinese versions of hospital birth certificates don’t show the child’s name, as this is something that is registered later when applying for Hukou, so why do some hospitals write the English name on the English version of the birth certificate?
Because they don’t really have any authentication AFAIK.
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I wonder if it’s also because there tends (at least in certain Han families) to be a large amount of horse trading, negotiation, consultation with fortune tellers, etc etc etc around the question of naming.
No idea whether this is the reason though as I have not gone through this personally. : D
Guy
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Totally unrelated, but when I got married, I had to invent a Chinese name on the spot, and even fecking write it. The person who was doing the duties said “You have a beautiful Chinese handwrite!”
I was flattered.
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One of my personal favorites is “Fuming Wang” (don’t know the characters - it was written in the Latin alphabet, and in that order, as it was on an academic paper). Google seems to suggest that there are a few Fuming Wangs around, actually.
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I think the reason is that the english birth certificate is often needed to register the birth with a foreign spouse’s country’s authorities.
I believe it’s because the birth certificate is not really very useful. The English one is more like a memento/commemorative document than a legal one. The real one is household registration, and that does have the child’s legal name
The English birth certificate will allow you to register a non-pinyin English name with the Household Registration Office.
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