On Sat, 10 May 1997 09:20:08 -0400, Matt Posner wrote:

3) For anyone:  is there a definitive way to write Shampoo's Chinese
name in English? This story uses Shan Puu; Richard Lawson uses Xian Pu;
there are probably others I haven't seen yet. Same question for Cologne
and Mousse.

As someone who did minutes of exhaustive research on this topic, I guess I
should answer this.

In Mandarin Chinese, with the currently widely used Pinyin system of
romanization, the names of our friends are as far as I can tell Shan Pu and Mu
Si. (Si is pronounced "sz", not like the Spanish word for yes.) This is based on
the meanings "coral" + "raw jade" and "wash"+"thread" which are given for these
names on various web pages. These words are also homynyms for "mountainous" +
"chest" and "eye" + "a tiny bit, only a trace". Make of this what you will.

As for the old ghoul, her name is said to mean "possible" + "rugged mountain
place" which would seem to indicate Ke Lin. "Lin" doesn't sound much like the
"logne" of Cologne, so I may be wrong here. Tom Jeffreys did point out, though,
that Ke Lin *does* sound kinda like the German city Koeln, which happens to be a
very, very old city.

Scott puts a double-u: Shanpuu, probably just as a pronounciation aid, to show
that the u is a long sound as in Tofu, not a short one as in Soun. This is
something that is often done in romanized *Japanese*.

I don't know where Xian Pu and Mu Tsu come from. Xian is a different sound from
Shan, and Tsu is a different sound in a different romanization from Si. For all
I know maybe these are correct in Cantonese, or maybe someone just thought they
looked cool and they got into widespread use.

Anyway, it's not that big a deal, and I think it safe to say that no one is
going to refuse to read anyone's story if they decide to use a different
romanization of these names. (Misspelling "Kawaikunee", on the other hand...
:-))

Gary Kleppe
kleppe@execpc.com, Home page http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe
My fanfics and the FFML map are on my comics/manga page,
       http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics