Wade-Giles en · PROPN
Etymology
1943. Named after British diplomats Thomas Francis Wade and Herbert Giles, who developed the system in the 19th century.
Meanings
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A system for transcribing the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese into the Latin alphabet; formally uses hyphens and the spiritus asper apostrophe.
The old spelling system, named the Wade-Giles system after the two 19th century Britons who developed it, made correct pronunciation unnecessarily difficult. It used apostrophes to distinguish aspirated consonants, such as p'ai pronounced with a "p" sound, from unaspirated, such as pai pronounced with a "b" sound. The new Pinyin system eliminates this distinction, which most newspapers ignored anyway. "Beijing" is much closer to the Chinese pronunciation that "Peking", and Vice Premier "Deng" is better rendering than "Teng." But the new system uses some letters in ways that still confuse English speakers. Thers difficult letters are: "c" which should be prounced in this system like the "ts" in "its"; "q" which should be pronounced like the "ch" in "cheek"; "x" which should be pronounced like the "sh" in "she"; and "zh" which should be pronounced like the "j" in "jump". The system invented by Sir Thomas Wade, diplomat and Cambridge University professor, about 1860 and developed by Herbert Giles, also a Cambridge professor, is only the best known of several in use over the past 100 years. Some of the most familiar Chinese place names, such as Peking and Canton, are derived only partially, or not at all, from Wade-Giles.
1979 March 5, Jay Mathews, “China Is China, But Hangchow Is Hangzhou”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 Dec 2023:Aside from some stylistic unevenness (Mr. Brookes uses both modern pinyin and older Wade-Giles transliterations, when lay readers probably would find it easier to read only the latter, given its continued familiarity for historic places and names) and a few lapses into therapeutic editorializing, “Fragile Cargo” is a fascinating and inspiring story of triumph and the tragedy of war.
2023 February 10, Michael Auslin, “‘Fragile Cargo’ Review: The Long Rescue of China’s Past”, in Wall Street Journal, archived from the original on 05 Mar 2023:No longer does the ROC claim to be China and the writing systems that Taiwan uses for Chinese have changed to reflect this. Taiwan has held on to traditional characters and bopomofo, resolutely resisted simplified characters, mostly retained Wade-Giles and Yale for personal, political and geographical names in Taiwan, but grudgingly accepted the linguistic arguments for Hanyu pinyin signage in public spaces.
2017 January 22, Martin Boyle, “Pinyin and a Taiwanese identity”, in Taipei Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 21 Jan 2017, Editorials, page 6:Most influential in further establishing the Romanization scheme first set down by Wade was Giles' 1,415-page A Chinese–English Dictionary, which became a standard reference work soon after its release in 1912. The orthography it employed came to be known as the Wade–Giles system of Romanization, and it was soon adopted by English-language academia, and then by the media and general public. In fact Giles' Romanization was only very slightly modified from Wade's – the differences are miniscule. Tones continued to be marked in the Wade–Giles system with numeral superscripts, with the neutral tone either being unmarked, or occasionally given the number '0' or '5'.
2016, Karen Steffen Chung, “Wade–Giles Romanization System”, in The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, →OCLC:Lee starts her memoir with a recollection of hiking with her mother shortly after Gong, the author’s grandfather, has passed away, and the narrative veers into a discussion of translation. Lee explains that she uses traditional Chinese characters, and both the Wade-Giles romanization system and Hanyu Pinyin to transliterate certain details from Mandarin. By extent, this exemplifies the language variations not only in Taiwan but also in her own family. Wade-Giles, she notes, is employed by her elders, though she has been taught Hanyu Pinyin. “The gaps that bind us span more than the distances between words,” she writes.
2020 April 24, Kristen Schott, “The Language of Self-Discovery: On Jessica J. Lee’s “Two Trees Make a Forest””, in Los Angeles Review of Books, archived from the original on 07 Jul 2020:As our conversation shifted from Giles’s translations to the prevalence of Wade–Giles, the romanization system for Mandarin Chinese, in Taiwan, Kevin recalled first noticing these linguistic nuances while translating an excerpt from Yang Shuang-zi’s The Season When Flowers Bloom for a contest. He encountered a character whose name was rendered in Wade-Giles, a moment that sparked a deeper realization. “Maybe in the past, I thought of the Chinese language as a whole,” he reflected. Now, he sees a constellation of distinct languages and traditions, as well as their overseas variations.
2026 April 24, Kevin Wang, quotee, “When the Stories Find You: Kevin Wang and the International Reach of Taiwanese Literature”, in Talent Taiwan, Made It in Taiwan:In accordance with the LC manual of bibliographic style, the heading for each entry contains the essential bibliographic data taken from the corresponding LC catalog card. The Chinese titles are given in Wade-Giles romanization. If the English title and/or the title in Pinyin romanization appear in the original work, they are also provided.
1977, “Explanatory Notes”, in Robert Dunn, editor, Chinese-English and English-Chinese Dictionaries in the Library of Congress, Library of Congress, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page vii:The pronunciation aids to Chinese names are of doubtful value. They are not phonetic, being only a slight modification of the Wade-Giles system, and become really confusing when Mandarin pronunciations are given for Cantonese or historical spellings.
1947 May, Earl Swisher, “MacNair, China”, in Pacific Historical Review, volume XVI, number 2, University of California Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 214:The problem of romanizing Chinese place names is a difficult one. Solutions differ from language to language, and there are several so-called "systems" used even in the English-speaking world. The system most widely accepted by professionals is the Wade-Giles system. One of its key advantages is that it permits the reader to check back to the original Chinese characters, since most dictionaries are arranged according to this romanization system.
1969, “A note on transliteration”, in Joseph Kitagawa, editor, Understanding Modern China, Quadrangle Books, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 7:The two most prominent systems of transliterations of Mandarin are Wade-Giles and Pinyin. Wade-Giles, established in the 19th century (Kaske,2008) is named after Herbert Allen Giles[...]
2018 March 12, Sophie Zhou, “The T/Daos shall meet: The failure and success of English transliterations of Mandarin Chinese”, in English Today, volume 35, number 1, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC:
Relateds
Gwoyeu Romatzyh · Pinyin · Yale · Tongyong Pinyin · Zhuyin fuhao · Hanyu Pinyin · Bopomofo
Synonyms
Translations (16)
ar وِيد–جِيلْز (transcription system for Mandarin) · ko 웨이드자일스 (transcription system for Mandarin) · fi Wade-Giles-järjestelmä (transcription system for Mandarin) · bg Уейд-Джайлс (transcription system for Mandarin) · ka ვეიდ-ჯაილზი (transcription system for Mandarin) · ru Уэ́йд-Джа́йлз (transcription system for Mandarin) · pt Wade-Giles (transcription system for Mandarin) · ar وَيْد–جَيْلْز (transcription system for Mandarin) · th เวด-ไจลส์ (transcription system for Mandarin) · yue 威妥瑪拼音 /威妥玛拼音 (transcription system for Mandarin) · cmn 韋氏拼音 /韦氏拼音 (transcription system for Mandarin) · mk Вејд-Џајлс (transcription system for Mandarin) · cmn 威翟式拼音 (transcription system for Mandarin) · cmn 威妥瑪拼音 /威妥玛拼音 (transcription system for Mandarin) · ja ウェード式 (transcription system for Mandarin) · pl Wade-Giles (transcription system for Mandarin)