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Tweet by Timothy Grose, a specialist on Islam in China, especially in Xinjiang:

A confidant in #Xinjiang asked me to share this image/report: All 伊 characters (also used for "Islam" in Chinese 伊斯兰教) appearing on signage must be removed or changed to a homophone (e.g. 依). The rumor is that even the Chinese name for Ghulja (伊宁) may be changed pic.twitter.com/V7PhQnNRqD

— Timothy Grose (@GroseTimothy) July 27, 2018

What in the world is going on here?

The first thing you need to know is that that the Chinese term for "Islam" is "Yīsīlán jiào 伊斯兰教".  Moreover, the Yī 伊 at the beginning of the term may be used as a Sinographic abbreviation of the whole, hence "Yī 伊" can stand for "I(slam)".

In the photograph, we see that the sign has been defaced by the removal of the "Yī 伊", which is clearly meant to denigrate or obliterate "Islam", even though, linguistically speaking, the "Yī 伊" here is merely the transcription of a sound in an Arabo-Uyghur name:

Àiyīsàěr
艾伊萨尔
Aysar

According to this website, QuranicNames, Aysar (أَيْسَر) is a Quranic name for males.  It means “easier”, “better off”, “living better”, and is the male version of the girl name Yusra.  It has the following alternate spellings in Roman letters:  Eesar, Aysere, Eysar, Aesere, Aysar, Eisere, Aesar, Aisere, Aiser, Eiser, and Aisare.

Here's the full name of the store (with ending completed by me):

Xīnjiāng Àiyīsàěr guójì shāngmào yǒuxiàn gōngsī
新疆艾伊萨尔国际商贸有限公司
Xinjiang Aysar International Trading Co., Ltd.

Following the suggested homophonic substitution of "yī 依" for "yī 伊", presumably one could write Aysar (أَيْسَر) as Àiyīsàěr 艾依萨尔 in Chinese characters instead as the customary Àiyīsàěr 艾伊萨尔, thus removing the offending "yī 伊".

The other name mentioned in the tweet as susceptible of revision is that of Yīníng 伊宁.

Yining (Chinese: 伊宁), also known as Ghulja (Uyghur: غۇلجا‎) or Qulja (Kazakh: قۇلجا, Құлжа), and formerly Ningyuan (寧遠) is a county-level city in northwestern Xinjiang, People's Republic of China, and the seat of the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. Historically, Yining is the successor to the ruined city of Almaliq in neighbouring Huocheng County.

Source

Following the rule of homophonous substitution mentioned above, Yīníng 伊宁 could be sanitized or de-Islamicized as Yīníng 依宁.

It should be noted that historically Yining has been a hotbed of Islamic resistance to Chinese suzerainty, and it remains so to this day.

While the full-scale promulgation of a taboo against "yī 伊" for transcriptional purposes in Xinjiang seems unlikely, anything is possible in a police state where one tenth of the Uyghur population has been interned in "re-education camps" and butchers have to chain their knives even when in use to cut meat:

"Know Your Place Prol! Authorities force Uyghur butchers to use chained-knives", by H. Clay Aalders, The Truth About Knives (7/24/18)

[h.t. Geoff Wade]

July 27, 2018 @ 11:00 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and politics, Language and religion, Taboo vocabulary, Transcription

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