Posted by Sébastien-Jérôme Hew on November 12, 1999 at 08:45:13:
In Reply to: Re: What is the meaning of the surname TAN? posted by Matt Wu on September 18, 1999 at 02:20:03:
Note that Tan is actually an "incorrect" romanization of the original dialectal pronounciation. It should be more like Dan. Just as Zhou was incorrectly romanized as Chou,Zhang as Chang etc.
It is not correct to say that Chou is an incorrect romanisation of Zhou. In the Wades-Gilles system of romanisation, the correct romanisation is indeed Chou. What is Chou in Hanyu Pinyin would be Ch'ou in Wade-Giles. This also applied to Chang. They are not incorrectly romanised, they're just romanised under a different system. Hanyu Pinyin isn't a be all and end all, after all.