Let me know if this is the wrong sub for such a question.
In the manga Kingdom, which is about the unification of the Qin empire in China by Ying Zheng (AKA Qin Shi Huang), all the Chinese names are Japonified. For instance, 嬴政 (Ying Zheng) becomes Ei Sei, 成蟜 (Cheng Jiao) becomes Sei Kyou, 楊端和 (Yang Duanhe) becomes To Tanwa, and so on. This is basically every single name in the series. I’m wondering if this happens to all Chinese names in Japanese, or is this only done for historical names. Like, are Xi Jinping, Deng Xiaoping or Mao Zedong’s names Japonified? Or does this happen only for historical figures like past emperors who are long dead? Or not at all? Or is it something that only some people do, and others don’t?
To be clear, Japonification of Ying Zheng is Ei Sei as in Kingdom, but just borrowing it and adapting the word into Japanese phonology would make it In Tsen or something.
4 comments
It’s not uncommon, yeah. For example if you look up the Japanese wiki page for Xi Jinping it lists “Shu Kinpei” as the first reading, and then シー•チンピン in katakana.
Wikipedia will give you the reading of the head word for any article:
[鄧小平](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%84%A7%E5%B0%8F%E5%B9%B3): （とう しょうへい、簡体字：邓小平、[英語](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E): Deng Xiaoping、トン・シャオピン…)
I think almost all Chinese people at my workplace use japanese readings for their surnames – for example 趙心彤 Zhao Xintong becomes 趙さん read ちょうさん, etc., so definitely not only a historical thing.
Mao is known as もうたくとう, so yeah at least sometimes.