Jordan / Qiaodan / 乔丹
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There was quite a stir this week surrounding a high profile court case in China over Michael Jordan's suit to control the branding rights to his name. The controversy is described in this NYT article by Sui-wee Lee:
"Michael Jordan Owns Right to His Name in Chinese Characters, Too, Court Rules" (12/7/16)
After reading the article, Ethan Merritt sent in some pertinent observations and questions:
I find myself wondering what logic the Chinese legal system used to reach this result, and how much it is tied to a particular choice of characters to represent the name "Jordan". Did the ruling hold that any characters with a possible reading that sounds like "Jordan" are protected? Some particular characters?
Apparently the Pinyin representation "Qiaodan" is not considered to be protected, despite being more obviously based on phonetic equivalence to the original.
In truth, the court's ruling left a lot of vital issues unresolved. The legal complexities of the case are reflected in this professional account from the China Law Blog by Matthew Dresden:
"China Trademarks: Michael Jordan Emerges Victorious (Sort of)" (12/8/16)
There are two main ways to write "Jordan" in Chinese characters: Yuēdàn 约旦 when referring to the country, Qiáodān 乔丹 when it is a surname, and that surname is by no means restricted to Michael Jordan. But when you say "Qiáodān 乔丹" in China, the first person everyone thinks of is almost certainly MJ. And if "Qiáodān 乔丹" is associated with sports gear and a logo showing a basketball player, the probability that it means MJ reaches a hundred per cent.
Yuēdàn 约旦 and Qiáodān 乔丹 are purely transcriptional (used for phonetic purposes). Their semantic content ("agreement / pact-dawn"; "tall / lofty / proud / stately-cinnabar / vermilion") is irrelevant when they are being used to transcribe foreign names like these.
It must be pointed out that "Qiáodān" is the Pinyin for 乔丹. "Qiáodān" is not derived directly from "Jordan". In that sense, it is essential to state emphatically that neither "Qiáodān" nor 乔丹 is a transliteration of "Jordan", as claimed in the NYT article and in many other reports. You can only have a transliteration when you're transferring letter by letter from one alphabet to another. Otherwise what you're doing is transcription. The transcriptional route from "Jordan" to "Qiáodān" and 乔丹 is thus Jordan > 乔丹 > Qiáodān, where Qiáodān is the Pinyin Romanization of 乔丹. You cannot transliterate from 乔丹 to Qiaodan or Jordan, and vice versa; you transcribe from 乔丹 to Qiaodan or Jordan, and vice versa. There are no letters of the alphabet in Chinese characters, nor are there any Chinese characters in letters of the alphabet.
Underscoring the lack of clarity and authority in the court's decision is the bold statement on the home page of the Qiaodan Chinese sportswear company — in white letters on a bright red background that went up shortly after the court announced its inconclusive conclusions. In that statement, they're still talking about and brashly defending "mínzú pǐnpái de huīhuáng 民族品牌的辉煌" ("glory of the national brand").
You draw your own conclusion about where things now stand with the (Michael) Jordan brand and its competitor / imposter 乔丹 / qiaodan in China.
Oh, yeah, President-elect Trump also has brand name problems and inconclusive court rulings in China. See:
"In China, Toilets Have Trump’s Name Without His Permission" (Sui-wee Lee, NYT, 11/15/16).
Going beyond personal names, the protection of intellectual property rights, patents, copyrights, trademarks, logos, etc. in China is an endless battle. I know firsthand because I've been in the middle of one such case myself after I saw pirated copies of the first edition of the ABC Chinese-English dictionary on the shelves of Beijing bookstores before we had a chance to distribute it in America!
[UPDATE: "The Michael Jordan case in China – to be continued" The IPKat (1/24/17)]
liuyao said,
December 11, 2016 @ 11:40 am
I don't know if anyone before Michael Jordan would be known in China, and gave rise to this particular transcription. It may be a conscious choice to avoid confusion with Jordan the country.
As for personal names, one interesting case is Monroe. When transcribed 梦露 (dreamy dew), it's only referring to Marilyn Monroe. For other Monroes, it's 门罗 (which doesn't make sense, though if pressed one might think of the set phrase 门可罗雀).
Many old transcriptions of personal names try to use a Chinese surname for the initial syllable. The practice is still common in Hong Kong and (less so) in Taiwan.
Victor Mair said,
December 11, 2016 @ 2:07 pm
There's a Jordan Road and MTR station in Hong Kong. In this case the name is transcribed in Cantonese as Zo2deon1 佐敦. See the Wikipedia articles in English and Chinese.
The street was supposedly originally named after the British diplomat John Newell Jordan (1852-1925), but he is known in Chinese as Zhūěrdiǎn / Zyu1ji5din2 朱邇典. Some Chinese language sources state that a part of the road was renamed to commemorate a British pathologist named G. P. Jordan who served in Hong Kong for nearly three decades.
Cervantes said,
December 11, 2016 @ 4:41 pm
Yes, that road in Kowloon was re-christened "佐敦" more than a century ago. It used to be called Sixth Street.
Chas Belov said,
December 12, 2016 @ 3:22 am
@liuyao re "Many old transcriptions of personal names try to use a Chinese surname for the initial syllable."
When I got a Chinese name I decided to go with meaning rather than sound so I didn't have to worry about Mandarin vs. Cantonese. Of course, that required me to look up the meaning of my name segments. Fortunately, 白 (White, for Russian "Belov") is a Chinese surname.
Cervantes said,
December 12, 2016 @ 7:32 am
Chas, you'll appreciate this:
(Overheard at a kitchen table not too far from me.)