The Story Behind The Peculiar Romanised Spelling Of China's Olympic Mascot (Bing Dwen Dwen)

When I saw the cute panda mascot of the Beijing Winter Olympics and learnt its name, I was a bit puzzled.

Normally, the name 冰墩墩 would be spelt bīng dūn dūn in pīnyīn (冰 bīng = "ice", 墩墩 dūn dūn = “robust, healthy, stout”). But it's actually spelt Bing Dwen Dwen.

Looking up Google, I finally found the answer. The strange romanised spelling was done for the sake of overseas visitors, who would mostly be unaware of the rules of pīnyīn spelling, with its diacritical (accent) marks denoting tones.

This article talks about an older romanisation scheme for Mandarin called Gwoyeu Romatzyh (National Language Romanisation), which would itself be spelt guóyǔ luómǎzì in pīnyīn. Although quite complex in its rules, this scheme has two advantages over pīnyīn.

1. It doesn't use diacritical marks, so it can be typed out using a regular keyboard
2. The pronunciation that it suggests to a non-Chinese person comes closest to the actual tonal pronunciation of the word

This site provides further detail on the origins of the mascot's name.

Reading about Gwoyeu Romatzyh was quite fascinating. That someone thought up such a sophisticated romanisation scheme for Mandarin in the 1920s is amazing.

Here's how the Wikipedia entry describes the notation of the four tones in pīnyīn and in Gwoyeu Romatzyh:

		High tone	Rising tone	Falling-rising tone	Falling tone
Example 1	Pīnyīn	xuē	xué	xuě	xuè
	Gwoyeu Romatzyh	shiue	shyue	sheue	shiueh
Example 2	Pīnyīn	chuān	chuán	chuǎn	chuàn
	Gwoyeu Romatzyh	chuan	chwan	choan	chuann
Example 3	Pīnyīn	chāng	cháng	chǎng	chàng
	Gwoyeuh Romatzyh	chang	charng	chaang	chanq
Example 4	Pīnyīn	hāi	hái	hǎi	hài
	Gwoyeu Romatzyh	hai	hair	hae	hay
Example 5	Pīnyīn	bāo	báo	bǎo	bào
	Gwoyeu Romatzyh	bau	baur	baoo	baw

Today, the romanisation we see is almost always pīnyīn, but Gwoyeu Romatzyh is used in rare cases, the most famous being the spelling of the Chinese province of Shaanxi.

There are two adjacent provinces called Shanxi and Shaanxi. In Chinese characters and in pīnyīn, they're written 山西 shānxī and 陕西 shǎnxī. The only difference here is in tone, represented by diacritical marks, but since these are not always guaranteed to be preserved in all text, a safer way to differentiate the spellings of the two provinces is to use Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanisation to call them Shanxi and Shaanxi.