I don’t understand why syz puts two z letters in the middle of his/her respelling. Perhaps (s)he can enlighten us.

Paul’s comment is being answered by later posts.

But my primary reason for commenting on this entry was the struggle you face as a linguist over prescriptivism vs. descriptivism. I am an editor and translator by trade, with little linguistic training, and perhaps because of this I found your name justification compelling. I wrote on my own blog last week about my search for a happy medium between descriptivism and prescriptivism prompted by the very name-calling (no pun intended) that you address in this post.

Can there be a middle ground? I would really appreciate your take on this as linguists. The post is here.

Graham, I feel your pain. You gotta teach something, and I agree that if you know how native Beijingers say the name of their fair city, it seems a bit odd to teach something like Beizzhing (my preferred spelling).

But Churchill’s only got half his tongue in his cheek, and Paul D. makes the same point with his comment about teaching tones. Where are you gonna stop with trying to sound more “authentic”? Here are the constraints I’d put on naming:

1. Since it’s a name given to the city by speakers of English. It has to be consistent with the sounds of English (which both Beizzhing and Bay-Jing are). Trying to throw in tones or the Mandarin “b” or “j” would be forbidden by this rule.
2. It shouldn’t be grossly offensive to the current inhabitants

And after that, well, it’s up to the masses. As much as I would (and I really would) prefer that the masses had chosen Bay-Jing, it appears to me that they haven’t. I suppose an enormous marketing effort by news agencies, in coordination with the Olympic marketer-fest (and not to mention John Wells and your fine blog!), might push Bay-Jing back into the popular consciousness.

But probably not.

So I’m going to swallow my tongue and let Beizzhing live.
And yes, I still say Bay-Jing in English even though I leave off the tones. People probably just think I don’t know how to pronounce it.

“I do not consider that names that have been familiar for generations in England should be altered to study the whims of foreigners living in those parts. Where the name has not particular significance the local custom should be followed. However, ‘Constantinople’ should never be abandoned, though for stupid people ‘Istanbul’ nay be written in brackets after it. As for ‘Angora,’ long familiar with us through the Angora cats, I will resist to the utmost of my power its degradation to ‘Ankara.’

“You should note, by the way, the bad luck which always pursues peoples who change the names of their cities. Fortune is rightly malignant to those who break with the traditions and customs of the past. As long as I have a word to say in the matter ‘Ankara’ is banned, unless in brackets afterwards. If we do not make a stand we shall in a few weeks be asked to call Leghorn ‘Livorno,’ and the BBC will be pronouncing ‘Paris’ Paree. Foreign names were made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for foreign names. I date this minute St. George’s Day.”

“Foreigners living in those parts” is splendid. The last sentence shows that his remarks were at least slightly tongue in cheek …

I strongly disagree with this. Names, like all words in a language, exist for the benefit of the speaker, not the thing spoken of. When I speak English, I may say Germany instead of Deutschland, Japan instead of Nihon, and hiss the s in Paris to my heart’s content. A Chinese person has no business telling me how to pronounce the capital of China in English, just as I have no business telling him to say “Vancouver” instead of Wengehua when he speaks Mandarin.

All names change pronunciation when they are spoken in another language. Trying to nitpick the details is ridiculous. What’s next, are we going to insist on proper tones when saying “Beijing” in English?

(And we’d never have this Beijing problem if we’d just kept with the perfectly good name of Peking in English.)