Could you spell that please Sir?
brendan
July 30, 2007, 12:07 AM posted in General DiscussionWhenever I book a hotel room by phone, I invariably end up spelling my surname (as you might expect). It can be interesting given how easily one letter can be confused with another over the phone (I really like the German system of using first names to represent letters, Lawlor is rendered as Ludwig Anton Wilhelm Ludwig Otto Rickard) I'm going to be in China for 3 weeks at the beginning of 2008 and I've been thinking about all the interesting little challenges that will lie ahead: like ringing up a hotel/hostel in advance and making a booking. How on earth can I explain to somebody over the phone what my name is, if I'm speaking (something approaching) Chinese, and given the apparent absence of the concept of spelling?
I'm guessing that I'm not the first to encounter this problem. Any wisdom?
lostinasia
July 30, 2007, 10:18 AMActually, the people that really suffer with names are the Chinese - in the west we care so much about how names are spelt, and what order they're in, but then someone with a Chinese name comes along and who knows how it's been romanized. You get kids getting held up in customs because their passport says Chang and the parents' says Zhang and immigration thinks there's person-smuggling going on. Remember, many Chinese-speakers may never have used the romanized version of their name, and when they write it themselves they may spell it totally different from their passport. As for calling and making reservations: if you've got as far as booking the dates and the room and discussing the price, you'll definitely be ok - a little name-misspelling isn't going to hurt. They'll remember you as the foreigner who can speak some Chinese.
KennyK
July 30, 2007, 10:38 AMi wouldn't worry about it... hotels always have staff that can speak english.. even if you can speak a little chinese, they will probably transfer you immediately to an English-speaker because that's their instinctive reaction on handling foreigners...so just spell your name in letters as you would in your own country
johnb
July 30, 2007, 01:08 AMGenerally you just spell your name using the English letters, and hope for the best (Lawlor is easy -- try mine, Biesnecker). One thing you can do if the person on the other end isn't understanding the letter you're saying is use the Chinese "word的character" trick. For instance, 'w' is 'uvw的w' and 'd' is 'abcd的d.' I've found, though, that in general people here aren't as strict with names matching IDs and stuff as they are in the west, at least with foreigners. I once flew on a ticket that used my middle name as my last name, and nobody batted an eye.