Wade-Giles

The problem of romanizing Chinese place names is a difficult one. Solutions differ from language to language, and there are several so-called "systems" used even in the English-speaking world. The system most widely accepted by professionals is the Wade-Giles system. One of its key advantages is that it permits the reader to check back to the original Chinese characters, since most dictionaries are arranged according to this romanization system.

1969, “A note on transliteration”, in Joseph Kitagawa, editor, Understanding Modern China, Quadrangle Books, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 7

In accordance with the LC manual of bibliographic style, the heading for each entry contains the essential bibliographic data taken from the corresponding LC catalog card. The Chinese titles are given in Wade-Giles romanization. If the English title and/or the title in Pinyin romanization appear in the original work, they are also provided.

1977, “Explanatory Notes”, in Robert Dunn, editor, Chinese-English and English-Chinese Dictionaries in the Library of Congress, Library of Congress, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page vii

The old spelling system, named the Wade-Giles system after the two 19th century Britons who developed it, made correct pronunciation unnecessarily difficult. It used apostrophes to distinguish aspirated consonants, such as p'ai pronounced with a "p" sound, from unaspirated, such as pai pronounced with a "b" sound. The new Pinyin system eliminates this distinction, which most newspapers ignored anyway. "Beijing" is much closer to the Chinese pronunciation that "Peking", and Vice Premier "Deng" is better rendering than "Teng." But the new system uses some letters in ways that still confuse English speakers. Thers difficult letters are: "c" which should be prounced in this system like the "ts" in "its"; "q" which should be pronounced like the "ch" in "cheek"; "x" which should be pronounced like the "sh" in "she"; and "zh" which should be pronounced like the "j" in "jump". The system invented by Sir Thomas Wade, diplomat and Cambridge University professor, about 1860 and developed by Herbert Giles, also a Cambridge professor, is only the best known of several in use over the past 100 years. Some of the most familiar Chinese place names, such as Peking and Canton, are derived only partially, or not at all, from Wade-Giles.

1979 March 5, Jay Mathews, “China Is China, But Hangchow Is Hangzhou”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 Dec 2023

Most influential in further establishing the Romanization scheme first set down by Wade was Giles' 1,415-page A Chinese–English Dictionary, which became a standard reference work soon after its release in 1912. The orthography it employed came to be known as the Wade–Giles system of Romanization, and it was soon adopted by English-language academia, and then by the media and general public. In fact Giles' Romanization was only very slightly modified from Wade's – the differences are miniscule. Tones continued to be marked in the Wade–Giles system with numeral superscripts, with the neutral tone either being unmarked, or occasionally given the number '0' or '5'.

2016, Karen Steffen Chung, “Wade–Giles Romanization System”, in The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, →OCLC

No longer does the ROC claim to be China and the writing systems that Taiwan uses for Chinese have changed to reflect this. Taiwan has held on to traditional characters and bopomofo, resolutely resisted simplified characters, mostly retained Wade-Giles and Yale for personal, political and geographical names in Taiwan, but grudgingly accepted the linguistic arguments for Hanyu pinyin signage in public spaces.

2017 January 22, Martin Boyle, “Pinyin and a Taiwanese identity”, in Taipei Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 21 Jan 2017, Editorials, page 6