Cho Chang is Klingon?

[pne]

I was just thinking recently... the translators of the Chinese versions of Harry Potter assume that Cho Chang is Chinese and tried to find Chinese characters representing her name; they came up with 張秋 Zhang1 Qiu1, using the common Chinese family name Zhang1, which is also often written Chang in English (this is the Wade-Giles spelling of the name). Its pronunciation probably sounds more like "Jang" to English ears than "Chang" (I believe the sound is voiceless but unaspirated).

So if "jang" is a possible match, perhaps her original name was not, in fact, Qiu Zhang but rather chojang? That would be Klingon for "You answer me". Coincidence? I think not!

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

LOL
DO you honestly think the author of "Harry Potter" knows Mandarin and Klingon so well and would then use Wade-Giles for transcribing Chinese names?

But nice to hear that there are also other people out there who spend their time thinking about stuff that is completely unimportant. :D

Zhang Qiu? Or just Cho Chang?

[pne.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think she knows Klingon. And I don't know whether she knows Mandarin; I can imagine not.

My personal guess is that she created the name to sound Chinese but did not use any particular transcription, and that she used the spelling "Chang" because it was a common English spelling of a common Chinese name, not because that spelling was according Wade-Giles in particular.

I also doubt a little whether she meant the name to have a particular meaning (that is, to represent two particular Chinese characters).

[opal1159.livejournal.com]

Why would her name being "you answer me" be a coincidence?

[pne.livejournal.com]

It was kind of a joke.

I just noticed that it could, morphologically, be a Klingon word, since cho- is a verbal prefix.

Kind of stupid, really (I think Timwi noticed it and that is what he meant in his comment).

[timwi.livejournal.com]

"Coincidence? I think not!"

Geekiness? I think too! :)