Good to hear you and Amber are continuing on with this. I also like how you explain the meaning.

And I like how you both avoided talking about politics even though you talked about politicians. You ladies were quite smooth in avoiding it.

Art, that’s an interesting name your sister’s teacher had there. I’m guessing the teacher wasn’t a fan of his

when i heard 总统, my mind was immediately transported back to my high school days in the philippines. i had this Chinese teacher who taught a course on reading the local Chinese language newspaper (most of us didn’t learn much) and she ended up teaching another Chinese-language class that my younger sister took two years later.

at that time, marcos was the president of the philippines. in Chinese, he was addressed as 馬可仕总统. one day, my sister came home to share that this teacher got creative with transliterating marcos and called the president 马狗死总统。i think everyone in my sister’s class thought it was funny. so did my entire family after hearing my sister tell us about it. it may seem disrespectful, but marcos was a corrupt dictator.

I was curious as to how the chinese names for public figures are decided? I know how varied transliterations for english names can be. Is it popular usage that decides the name? Or is there some sort of official way of getting a chinese name for public figures?

Great show by the way, I always look forward to these.