RE: Paper on the (misnaming) of the Hangzhou numerals in ISO/IEC 1064

From: Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com
Date: Mon Mar 06 2000 - 12:15:44 EST


Tom Emerson wrote:
> A while back I became interested (obsessed) with the origin of the name
> "Hangzhou" associated with a range of code points in Unicode. After much
> digging, and with a little help from my friends, I've found, with quite a
> degree of certainty, that they are missnamed, and that they should be
> called the "Suzhou" numerals. [...]

Perhaps the misnaming was caused by a misread hanzi?

Take a look at the attached picture (please, try and forgive my horrible
handwriting).

Ideograph (2) is the "simplified" form of "su" in "Suzhou" as it appears in
section 3 of your paper.

Ideograph (1) is an ideograph pronounced "hang"! Don't the two guys look
quite similar?

The entry for character (1) from the Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English
Dictionary, Oxford University Press and The Commercial Press, Oxford/Beijing
1986 (ISBN 0 19 584048 8] reads:

        "hāng: I (n) rammer; tamper II (v) ram; tamp; pound"

I wonder, then, what the meaning of the compound "Hangzhou" is... Something
like "Tampershire", I guess 8-)

_ Marco



hangsu.gif



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