Zhao “left crescent” needs a new name

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The man formerly known as C

Zhao C can no longer call himself Zhao C.

The 22-year old man had used “C” as his given name for his entire life, yet when the time came to update his ID card to a second-generation version, the local Public Security Bureau informed him that his name violated the rules. Not only that, their computers were not equipped to handle non-standard characters.

Zhao couldn’t believe that a name that had been used on official documents for two decades could suddenly be invalidated, so he took the PSB to court in what was heralded as China’s first name-rights lawsuit.

In June 2008, a district court in Yingtan, Jiangxi Province, found in his favor, but the PSB appealed.

Zhao’s father Zhao Zhirong, a lawyer, argued on his behalf during the court session yesterday. He brought up a number of other commonly-used letters that do not seem to present any problems for police computers:

  • A, B, C: Zhao Zhirong pointed out that addresses often contain Latin letters, of the form Section A, Building B, Unit C. This proves that the PSB system is able to handle letters.
  • X: Zhao Zhirong pointed out that his own second-generation ID card contains the letter “X” in the checksum place. The police representative said that X is used to represent the number 10 as a single digit, but it is not part of a name.
  • CCTV: Zhao Zhirong brought up China’s national broadcaster, which has stated several times that it has no intention of changing the abbreviation of its name, despite Ministry of Education rules that could be interpreted to prohibit English and English-language abbreviations in station logos. The police representative recognized Zhao’s example, but averred that the station would certainly not have filed its registration papers using the abbreviation “CCTV.”

The most interesting part of the case involved a dispute over whether the “C” in Zhao C’s name was part of Hanyu Pinyin, the PRC’s official Romanization system for Mandarin Chinese, or if it was a foreign language letter:

In court, the Yuehu District PSB argued that the lower court had been mistaken in its factual judgment and application of the law….First, the respondent uses the English letter “C” for his name. In Pinyin, this has a pronunciation similar to (雌), rather than (西). Moreover, the respondent did not provide the lower court with evidence that the English letter “C” is part of the national standard for “numbers and symbols” of the People’s Republic of China.

Since the pronunciation of the letter was an issue, arguments in court referred to a “left crescent” (左半月形), which the Jiangnan City Daily notes was mentioned more than one hundred times. Zhao Zhirong argued that the idea that the “left crescent” is a foreign letter is an outdated historical concept; the PSB did not agree.

After an intense, three-hour session that included the sight of a bailiff fainting against a table, the denouement was fairly anti-climactic: Zhao and the PSB reached a mutual agreement whereby he would voluntarily change his name, and they would waive the paperwork fee. The PSB offered him compensating, which he declined.

Zhao Zhirong told the Information Daily that he and his son don’t have any good ideas for a new name, so they’re asking the public for suggestions.

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