Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-30068215-20160129095821/@comment-114.241.248.55-20160130134816

Old McDonald wrote: Hsiao is a different way to romanize the name. This method is no longer used much in China, but it's still the most-used romanization method for names in Taiwan (Taiwan only switched to Pinyin a couple of years ago). Sorry for late post, but I'm Taiwanese-American, so I think I know enough about my culture and language to at least make a point (sorry for long post). Officially, we have made the attempt to use Hanyu Pinyin since 2009. However, this is met with a lot of backlash, and most of our romanization are still done using the Wade-Giles system (the situation is more of a "we'll put the Pinyin in brackets as an acceptable alternative from now on"). The keyboards are still made with our (highly impractical) "Chu-yin" character entry system even though we could have started using Cantonese Pinyin, which would still give you traditional characters. The names of things (people, streets, buildings, cities, etc.) are officially in Wade-Giles.

Even without factoring that in, her name would be in Wade-Giles, because back when she was born, there wouldn't even have been any attempt at using PinYin. (I'm around her age and my given name is in Wade-Giles.) Hsiao Ching-Li is definitely the correct spelling; Ching Li or Chingli is also considered OK. It's better if one of those was her official name, but putting Shao Jinri as a placeholder until an official version also makes sense. This is the thing I really hope Ishida-sensei gets right because it's such a controversial topic, much worse than using Karren instead of Karen could ever be, because It SHOULD NOT be in Pinyin; I am currently living in China actually, and I still go by the Wade-Giles spelling. (Cantonese people have their own system as well, even though they commonly use Pinyin for theireveryday, as evident in their names too.)

P.S. Trying to make it neutral. Don't know if it's working.