for the record

[kaigou]

Because I see this throughout the fandom:

Long means dragon, in Mandarin.

Chang does NOT.

Actually, Chang and Chung are variants on the old style of pinyin; Zhang is the modern version, as my teacher told me. (Connie Chung would've been Connie Zhang if her family had come over in the past forty years.) It's not a word that really has a meaning, per se; it's a measure word, for flat, square objects. Yi zhang bi is a piece of paper. You could say yi jhi bi -- it's sort of like saying, "a lot of paper" in english, roughly -- but it's more proper to use the measure words if one applies. Like in english we say "a ream of paper" or "a bundle of sticks" or "an unkindness of ravens" or whatever.

I know there's some stuff about the rare times when a woman outranked a man in China and she'd take the "male" role and he took the "female" role (thus taking her last name, instead, and becoming part of her clan). It had something to do with when an aristocratic family had only daughters, but I don't know the specifics. I just know that the surname of zhang or chung or chang, depending on how you romanticize the word, is a measure word.

Here ends the random fandom observation. Sigh.

Comments

[moffit.livejournal.com]

I learned something new. :o (I never had really thought about just why it was a fandom habit of calling Wufei the dragon.)

[kenderlyn.livejournal.com]

cool. Being the sad little nerd that I am, I love learning something new, especially if it's to do with linguistics and etymology...

[meritjubet.livejournal.com]

It's also probably playing on stereotypes of China and the dragon and so Wufei, and we all know how common they are in GW fandom.

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

Also, in Cantonese it's leung -- which is why Kowloon is a bastardization of kao (or gao) leung, "Nine Dragons" (for the hills?).