Well this aged like milk.

[u/waiha]

Stumbled upon this while clearing out the attic.

She visited my primary school in Edinburgh shortly after releasing TPS. The girl in front of me (my friend and train-to-school comrade) was Southeast Asian and has an incredibly elaborate sounding name. When Joanne screwed up her face when my friend gave her her name for the signature, I laughed. This is how she decided to sign my copy.

I was laughing at you, JK.

EDIT: It’s on EBay.

[u/Irish618]

Didn't someone do a write up on Reddit about how, while it would definitely be a very uncommon name, its still a (potential? reasonable? Unsure of how to word it) Chinese name.

[u/atrde → u/Irish618]

There are people actually named that. She just combined two Asian names that she knew in real life and didnt realize how awkward it was.

[u/Demostravius4 → u/atrde]

Or Cho is just an anglified Zhou or Qui?

[u/Hardtack_dev → u/Demostravius4]

That's probably it I can't think of any other way somebody might arrive at that name

[u/anders91 → u/Demostravius4]

Her name in the mandarin translations is Qiū Zhāng (秋张).

[u/kristavocado → u/Irish618]

Lowkey my BF’s brother’s name is Cho Chang (well, the mandarin romanization Zhuo Zhang)…

[u/rara8122 → u/Irish618]

TBH it doesn’t matter much to me if an Asian-American or asian immigrated to another English speaking country character has a realistic Chinese name mostly bc a vast majority of Chinese Americans I’ve met have English names. It’s not exactly Rowling’s fault but it kind of takes me out of the story. Even if Chinese Americans exist in real life with Chinese names. This is a me issue but I’ve always had trouble hearing someone with a Chinese name but an English accent.

Even some of my family in China have English names. It’s just so common to have English names that the Chinese name feels weird. And (though this only happened once) seeing HP fans call English name swap suggestions (don’t remember which names bc it was a while ago and I can’t find the post but I like Chloe) more racist rubbed salt in the wound.

[u/phrostillicus → u/Irish618]

I saw a comment where someone mentioned that the Mandarin translator chose the character 秋 for the name Cho, which they thought was beautiful in both appearance and meaning, since it also means "autumn". I think the most uncommon thing about it is that her given name is only one syllable, whereas most Mandarin names you'll see will have two syllables.

[u/lf1119 → u/phrostillicus]

One syllable/word/character Mandarin first names are very very common actually. Korean first names are the ones that are almost always two syllables.

[u/Diligent-Step-7253 → u/[deleted]]

Some people want to convince themselves so bad that HP was an industry plant and that JKR is a bad author lmao

The script was rejected countless times before it eventually was accepted

[u/lazier_garlic → u/Irish618]

Potential if you can pick any romanization scheme for any Sinitic language and blow past typical preferences for girl's names, sure. And if the name can be read in any order.

Orrrrrr, it's blatantly two Korean surnames mashed together.

[u/ExcuseCommercial1338 → u/Irish618]

Come on.. you know she didn't do any research. She wrote fun children's books that the now adults are realizing are kinda asshole-ish. There doesn't have to be more about it.

[u/Noireha → u/Irish618]

Ehhh… no? Cho is Korean, while Chang could be Chinese or Korean but either way she essentially gave the character two last names. It’s naming someone Doe Doe instead of John Doe. The Chinese equivalent of the Korean Cho would be like Cao or Zhou.

Also most commonly Chinese names are 3 characters (one character last name and two character first name) but she gave only them two (one first name and one last name, very uncommon unless you’re an ethnic minority). It’s like growing up in the south throughout the 70s-90s and not be given a middle name (extremely rare) or being the only one with a single first name when all your friends are have compounded or double first names like Mary Sue or Betty Jean. if you gave your child that name, you wanted them to get bullied for being different or your parents hate you.

[u/sliminho77 → u/Noireha]

I guarantee you there are people called Cho Chang in the real world

[u/anders91 → u/Irish618]

To begin with ”Cho” and ”Chang” are both ambiguous; even if we assume Mandarin Chinese and a standardized transliteration into English characters; the tones are still missing.

Chinese culture also has very different naming traditions than we do in the west, and saying ”that’s not a real name!” doesn’t really work in the same way in my opinion…

[u/akaneko__ → u/Irish618]

There’s a difference between someone actually being named something and a white author just using the most stereotypical name she could think of because she didn’t bother to do any proper research