Not at all. Hahaha
Some newer signs might be in pinyin. Or the post office and google uses pinyin but the signs are in an older version.
…they do.
The systems cannot support Chinese characters or non-latin script.
That doesn’t make it an anglo name.
They basically do, since most of the computers won’t accept any other characters.
ETA - heh, @Marco beat me to it!
It’s cute that many of you equate romanization (which encompasses languages as varied as Bahasa, Vietnamese, and Atayal) with the English language.
In Taiwan’s defence of traditional Chinese characters (their default, which Indigenous folks have successfully challenged), I suppose we could say that it also encompasses Japanese language names.
Guy
You are both confusing script with ethnic names…the original statement was imagine if they were forced to have an anglo name. Anglo means english. E.g David John Smith as oppossed to Ching-te Lai.
“English” you say, pray tell which?
Historians usually point to four full-scale conquests, plus several smaller invasions that toppled the ruling king without reshaping the country.
The major conquests
- Roman conquest (43 AD onward). Under Emperor Claudius, Rome gradually brought most of what is now England under its rule, which lasted until about 410 AD.
- Anglo-Saxon settlement (5th–6th centuries). Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from northern Germany and Denmark migrated and fought their way in over generations, displacing or absorbing the Romano-British population. This was a slow takeover rather than a single invasion.
- Viking/Danish conquest (865–1016). The Great Heathen Army overran much of England from 865, creating the Danelaw. Later, Sweyn Forkbeard briefly took the throne in 1013, and his son Cnut ruled all of England from 1016.
- Norman Conquest (1066). William of Normandy defeated Harold II at Hastings. This was the last time a foreign power conquered England outright, and it replaced the ruling class, language of government, and landholding system.
Successful invasions that changed the crown
- 1216: Prince Louis of France, invited by rebel barons, held London and much of the southeast for over a year before withdrawing.
- 1326: Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer landed with a small force and deposed Edward II.
- 1399: Henry Bolingbroke returned from exile and seized the throne from Richard II.
- 1471 and 1485: Edward IV and then Henry Tudor landed with foreign-backed forces and won the crown. Henry Tudor did this at Bosworth in 1485.
- 1688: William of Orange landed with a large Dutch army, and James II fled. This is often called the last successful invasion of England, though it was framed as an invitation rather than a conquest.
So the short answer is about four times if you mean conquest by an outside people, and roughly ten if you include every successful armed landing that overthrew the government.
Seriously have you not heard of how people anglicised their names in the past? Even when they shared the same romanisation/latin script.
So you are arguing foreigners when naturalising should have a chinese name?
Honestly, no, but I also don’t see the requirement as being any greater burden than anglicizing a Chinese name. A lot of the Chinese names foreigners have here is just the Chinese phonetic spelling of their original name anyway, so it’s literally the same requirement. 
The retention of traditional Chinese characters as a default and requirement in Taiwan is a leftover of the ROC ethnostate logic. This logic has been successfully challenged by Indigenous folks in Taiwan whose real names (not the fake ones imposed by ROC colonizers on them after 1945) do not use Chinese characters. And if they can challenge this requirement, on what grounds do forumosans think that naturalizing citizens from outside the sinosphere and Japan also need to take fake Chinese names, others than to support the ROC ethnostate logic?
Guy
Ching-te Lai… isn’t anglicising!
David Lai… would be partially anglicising.
David Leigh… would be fully anglicising.
The latter is the kind of thing Taiwan expects foreigners to do.
My name in Taiwan isn’t Chinese.
It’s 馬可.
Nobody forced me to take a ‘Chinese name’. It’s just my name in the Chinese script. I could have added my whole surname and it would have been fine but impractical.
That’s wrong.
馬可 is Marco
馬克 is Mark.
Furthermore. If I really wanted to, I could have written something like 馬兒口, which in some accents would come pretty close to its pronunciation in English
Ah but what you don’t realize is the obvious business opportunity to set up a rival Italian themed (not German themed) bakery!
Guy
Losing your family name to presumably keep it under 3 characters is certainly a change in name.
