REPORT ON THE CURRENT STATUS OF
UNITED NATIONS ROMANIZATION SYSTEMS FOR GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES
Compiled by the UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems
Version 4.0, September 2013
The United Nations conference approved the Scheme for a Chinese Phonetic Alphabet (Pinyin) in 1977 (III/8) for the romanization of Chinese geographical names.
The system is used in China and in international cartographic products almost universally.
Chinese uses a logographic script whereby each character represents a word or syllable. The relationship between the characters and their pronunciation is complex and therefore the phonetic notation of a Chinese syllable cannot be unambiguously converted to its written form.
The approved readings of Chinese characters can be obtained from modern authoritative dictionaries, such as Xinhua Zidian.
The Modified Wade-Giles transcription (1892) was previously one of the most well-known systems of rendering Chinese syllables, especially in English-language texts. The syllables of the Wade-Giles (WG) system may be transformed into Pinyin syllables as given in the table below1 but bearing in mind that often it is not correct to change Wade-Giles into Pinyin without reference to current Chinese character sources.
| WG | UN |
| Syllable beginnings: | |
| ch | = zh, jA |
| ch’ | = ch, qA |
| hs | = x |
| j | = r |
| k | = g |
| k’ | = k |
| p | = b |
| p’ | = p |
| ss | = s |
| sz | = s |
| t | = d |
| t’ | = t |
| ts | = z |
| ts’ | = c |
| tz | = z |
| tz’ | = c |
| Syllable endings: | |
| ê | = e |
| eh | = e |
| en | = an |
| ên | = en |
| êng | = eng |
| êrh | = er |
| i | = i, yiB |
| ieh | = ie |
| ien | = ian |
| ih | = i |
| iung | = iong |
| o | = oC, uoD, eE |
| u | = u, ouF |
| ŭ | = i |
| ü | = u, üF |
| üan | = uan |
| üeh | = ue, üeF |
| uei | = ui |
| ün | = un |
| ung | = ong |
The Pinyin alphabet has also been adapted to the romanization of names from three minority languages in China: Mongolian, Tibetan and Uighur.