[dmoy]

Yea haha the chinese-to-english gets confusing, because it's not a 1:1, it's an N:1 thing, for the number different Chinese languages, different tones, and semi-malicious US immigration agents who botched the shit out of people's names in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Wu and Ng in Mandarin and Cantonese may be the same character. But Wu the common surname and Wu for some other thing (e.g. that mountain) may be different characters entirely.

It gets even more confusing when you throw a third Chinese language in, say Taishanese:

Wu = Ng (typically) for Mandarin and Cantonese et al. But if it's someone who went to America earlier, suddenly it's Woo. But even though they're both yue Chinese languages, Woo != Woo in Cantonese and Taishanese. For that name, it's Hu (Mandarin) = Wu / Wuh (Cantonese) = Woo (Taishanese, in America). Sometimes. Lol. Sometimes not.

Similarly, Mei = Mai = Moy

[koakuma-chan]

I have never seen a Chinese name that's just two consonants and ZERO vowels. Is Ng some kind of special case? Also interestingly if you put his Chinese name 吳恩達 into Google Translate, you literally get "Andrew Ng"

[dmoy]

> I have never seen a Chinese name that's just two consonants and ZERO vowels.

One difference is in Mandarin pinyin vs other stuff

Like in Mandarin pinyin 子 turns into zi, but a lot of Cantonese transliterations will have it as tsz.

(Notably, not the more "official" Cantonese transliterations, where it would be written as zi or ji)

It is still pretty rare though, yea. I can't even think of others off the top of my head