Wade–Giles
Wade–Giles (), sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade, during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles's Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892.
Wade–Giles was the system of transcription in the English-speaking world for most of the 20th century, used in standard reference books and in English language books published before 1979. It replaced the Nanjing-based romanization systems that had been common until late in the 19th century, such as the Postal romanization (still used in some place-names). In mainland China it has been entirely replaced by the pinyin system approved in 1958. Outside mainland China, it has mostly been replaced by pinyin. Additionally, its usage can still be seen in the common English names of certain individuals and locations such as Chiang Ching-kuo.
History
Wade–Giles was developed by Thomas Francis Wade, a scholar of Chinese and a British ambassador in China who was the first professor of Chinese at Cambridge University. Wade published in 1867 the first textbook on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin in English, the Yü-yen tzu-erh chi (traditional: 語言自邇集; simplified: 语言自迩集), which became the basis for the Romanization system later known as Wade–Giles. The system, designed to transcribe Chinese terms for Chinese specialists, was further refined in 1912 by Herbert Allen Giles, a British diplomat in China and his son, Lionel Giles, a curator at the British Museum.
