My name

My name in Mandarin

My name is 张zhang (IPA: [tʃɑŋ]) 聪cong (IPA: [tsʰʊŋ]). They both have the high level tone (tone number 55) in standard Mandarin.

The order of my given name and family name

Zhang is my family name and it is one of the most common surnames in China Wikipedial page. In many IPA transcriptions, the ‘zh’ sound in Mandarin Chinese is transcribed as an affricate with two retroflex consonants /ʈ͡ʂ/. I am not convinced. Sometimes I notice L2 Mandarin learners pronouncing the ‘zh’ sound a bit too retroflex-y. If you have experimental evidence (either for or against the retroflex argument) or have read such articles, please do contact me to let me know. Here I follow Li et al.’s (2017) illustration of IPA for Tianjin Mandarin link.

Cong is my given name and it means ‘clever’/ ‘intelligent’/’brilliant’. (More at the end of this post)

To avoid confusion, I use the reversed order — Cong Zhang — like most other Chinese people do in the west. Sometimes Chinese people indicate their surnames by capitalising the surname (ZHANG Cong), and/or underline the surname (Zhang Cong)

If you can’t pronounce it

If you can’t or don’t feel comfortable/confident in pronouncing my name in the Chinese way, please don't feel bad and just call me the English way (i.e. Kong). I much prefer being called Kong than being ignored because of the hard pronunciation, or being called Song, Zong, Tong, etc. A name is just a tag anyway. I personally don’t connect my identity to the pronunciation of my name.

More about ‘Cong’

Having said the above, I do quite like my given name. If you’re interested, here’s more about 聪 Cong:

This is how it evolved from the bronze script (i.e. script that was used in Bronze Age) to the current form.

It’s basically an ear on the left, and a window at the top right, and a heart at the bottom right. It tried to convey the meaning that someone has a window in their heart, which means they are clear about what’s going on about the situation. Then the left part, the ear, was added to convey the meaning of being observant by hearing. In ancient times, those who can hear well could judge better and therefore had a better chance to survive.

Therefore, 聪’s more basic meaning, which is still in use nowadays, is ‘hearing’. It also has the meaning of if one can hear well, it is not enough to be called Cong; they have to hear with their heart and be able to reflect and have insights, then that’s Cong. So nowadays, it is usually used to mean “brilliant/smart/bright/clever/intelligent”.

This is a clearer image of the objects it represents:

Here’s a quote I particularly like from ancient texts:

听有音之音者聋，听无音之音者聪。–《淮南子·说林训》
Those who can hear sounds are deaf; those who can hear silence are Cong.