I just came across the strangest news as I was browsing websites, in China new rules have been drawn up for the naming of new babies. In essence in the future a great deal of names that have rare chinese characters will not be allowed. To quote from The Times:
The Ministry of Public Security has drawn up new rules and babies’ names must in future be drawn from a database that excludes thousands of rare Chinese characters. Out go indecipherable names. With the introduction of electronic identity cards, the authorities will register only names that they decide to include on their database.
I find this utterly bizarre. My first thought was that it was perhaps some strange form of censorship, and in a sense it is, but there is a much simpler reason and it’s to do with technology:
Bao Suixian, a deputy director at the ministry, said: “We cannot handwrite rare characters on the cards like we did before.” About 60 million of China’s 1.3 billion people have at least one rare character in their name, making it difficult for them to open a bank account or to buy an aircraft ticket.
So the computerization of China’s beuracracy has infact led to a situation where technology will quash certain parts of language in an effort to be efficient. Of course it’s arguable that the chinese language has such a ridiculous number of words this is hardly a bad thing, but it is still extremely bizarre to me.
Oh well, viva la difference!
