Comments (Pronunciation Only)
Someone actually made another page to distinguish the other unfortunate pronunciation. Well, at least there was progress.
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This name is actually pronounced "jun" to rhyme with "fun" in Chinese, but "Joon" like "moon" in Korean. They share a Romanization.
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To clarify my comments from 2012:
The name listed here used to imply it was pronounced the same way in both Chinese and Korean. Neither I nor my parents have learned Pinyin, so we don't know how to write or read it. For some reason, people kept writing to me about that. The definition listed here does not use Pinyin either. I get that the pronunciation doesn't exist in Chinese, but Korean people I met actually informed me that it's pronounced "Joon" (like the month) rather than how it is in Chinese.
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The name listed here used to imply it was pronounced the same way in both Chinese and Korean. Neither I nor my parents have learned Pinyin, so we don't know how to write or read it. For some reason, people kept writing to me about that. The definition listed here does not use Pinyin either. I get that the pronunciation doesn't exist in Chinese, but Korean people I met actually informed me that it's pronounced "Joon" (like the month) rather than how it is in Chinese.
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No, EstherTester, the pinyin "Jun" does NOT in any way rhyme with "fun" in Chinese*. The closest approximation of the pinyin that I can get from this site's pronunciation guide is "zhuyn".
* There's no rhyme with "gun" in English, pinyin "gun" doesn't rhyme with pinyin "jun", and "fun" doesn't exist as a pinyin combination. Unless you're referring to a dialectal pronunciation, I don't see how your statement can be true, and Chinese was one of my mother tongues.
On an unrelated note, something tells me we need separate entries for names that look the same when romanised but actually come from different languages: applying that to this name, we'd have separate pages for the Japanese names and the Korean names that are romanised as "Jun". It's the same principle as that of splitting up other names, like with "Jean (1)" and "Jean (2)".
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* There's no rhyme with "gun" in English, pinyin "gun" doesn't rhyme with pinyin "jun", and "fun" doesn't exist as a pinyin combination. Unless you're referring to a dialectal pronunciation, I don't see how your statement can be true, and Chinese was one of my mother tongues.
On an unrelated note, something tells me we need separate entries for names that look the same when romanised but actually come from different languages: applying that to this name, we'd have separate pages for the Japanese names and the Korean names that are romanised as "Jun". It's the same principle as that of splitting up other names, like with "Jean (1)" and "Jean (2)".
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I don't understand your response, I think you just confused us even more.
In Chinese, the name is pronounced "Jun", THE SAME THING which rhymes with "fun" in English. Someone who says "fun" in English says the exact same thing for this name in Chinese, just with a 'J'. IDC about the Pinyin romanizations, I never learned that. In Mandarin Chinese, a common name is "JUN", but in Korean it is "JOON". They are the same character, which makes things even worse.
My parents told me in Cantonese it is not like that at all, it's actually "Gwun", but still isn't that the same just with a diff first sound? 'G' instead of 'J'.
Trust me, I spoke to people born and raised in both China and Korea and they admit this difference is confusing but obvious. Some of them didn't even know it 'til I pointed it out.
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In Chinese, the name is pronounced "Jun", THE SAME THING which rhymes with "fun" in English. Someone who says "fun" in English says the exact same thing for this name in Chinese, just with a 'J'. IDC about the Pinyin romanizations, I never learned that. In Mandarin Chinese, a common name is "JUN", but in Korean it is "JOON". They are the same character, which makes things even worse.
My parents told me in Cantonese it is not like that at all, it's actually "Gwun", but still isn't that the same just with a diff first sound? 'G' instead of 'J'.
Trust me, I spoke to people born and raised in both China and Korea and they admit this difference is confusing but obvious. Some of them didn't even know it 'til I pointed it out.
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Also in Korean they do this with a lot of other names. One Korean-born student told me, "Well yes, that is fair to say. It depends on which pronunciation system you're using. In syllables, 'J-U' is supposed to be 'Joo'" Not 'Juh', so yeah.
Yun is Yoon, Mun is Moon (this is my name, which means "culture" doing the same thing with an 'M'), and so forth.
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Yun is Yoon, Mun is Moon (this is my name, which means "culture" doing the same thing with an 'M'), and so forth.
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I'm not sure how to put this across in an accessible manner since you've said you don't care about the Pinyin (... not a very wise move, especially when the latter is the standardised way in which Mandarin Chinese is romanised nowadays for learners within China itself, as well as in places -- be they countries or schools -- that have adopted the same system). I'm still going to have to refer to it anyway (and even to the International Phonetic Alphabet, which I'm afraid you'll need to look up) to show you the differences, so I'll need you to bear with me.
"In Chinese, the name is pronounced "Jun", THE SAME THING which rhymes with "fun" in English. Someone who says "fun" in English says the exact same thing for this name in Chinese, just with a 'J'."
Nope, the '-un' in Mandarin Chinese is pronounced vastly differently from that in English. To borrow from the International Phonetic Alphabet, Chinese Pinyin 'Jun' (tones undifferentiated) is [tɕyn], while English 'fun' is [fʌn]. There is a world of difference between the vowels (and I'm not starting on the consonants because that was never the bone of contention). An English speaker without prior Mandarin Chinese background attempting to calque their pronunciation of the name on that of the word "fun" would most likely find themselves saying [ʤʌn], which isn't at all right, not when confronted with a Mandarin Chinese speaker.
In my earlier comment I said that "There's no rhyme with 'gun' in English, pinyin 'gun' doesn't rhyme with pinyin 'Jun', and 'fun' doesn't exist as a pinyin combination. Unless you're referring to a dialectal pronunciation, I don't see how your statement can be true, and Chinese was one of my mother tongues." Now -- thanks to your pointing it out -- I see how that can be a possible source of confusion. Let me try to clear that up:
In English, 'fun' and 'gun' rhyme (in IPA, they're transcribed as [fʌn] and [gʌn] respectively).
In Mandarin Chinese, we have no such thing because
+ Pinyin 'Jun' (tones undifferentiated) is [tɕyn], approximatable by this site's pronunciation guide as 'zhuyn' ([ʒyn])
+ Pinyin 'gun' (again, tones undifferentiated) is [ku̯ən] (can't find any possible approximations for this one in this site's pronunciation guide, though)
+ 'fun' does not exist in Pinyin.
I brought in these examples to try to drive home the point that the pronunciation of the Chinese syllable isn't calquable on English.
"In Mandarin Chinese, a common name is "JUN", but in Korean it is "JOON". They are the same character, which makes things even worse."
I have nothing to say to the contrary here. A shared romanisation is indeed cause for confusion, as is a shared spelling. That's why I was pushing for a split, as happened with "Jean (1)" and "Jean (2)" -- in both cases, the pairs of names look alike and have the same origin/basis, but in the case of the "Jean" names, one is used predominantly by French speakers and is pronounced closer to "John", while the other sounds like "gene" and is used primarily by English speakers. It's the same with the "Jun" names -- they likely have the same bases and the same meanings (and if they don't, that's even worse) one is used by Chinese speakers, the other by Korean speakers, and both have their own pronunciations.
"My parents told me in Cantonese it is not like that at all, it's actually "Gwun", but still isn't that the same just with a diff first sound? 'G' instead of 'J'."
I can't tell you about that since I don't know Cantonese. I'm going to be bold and work based on the assumption that this example of yours is correct, in which case you see that even in Cantonese, the pronunciation of the word/name is not at all calquable on English.
"Trust me, I spoke to people born and raised in both China and Korea and they admit this difference is confusing but obvious. Some of them didn't even know it 'til I pointed it out."
... I'm ethnically Chinese and raised on Mandarin Chinese and English, and my homeland's been swept by quite a few waves of K-fever (basically, mass infatuation over all things Korean), so I know I can trust you on this particular statement.
"Also in Korean they do this with a lot of other names. One Korean-born student told me, "Well yes, that is fair to say. It depends on which pronunciation system you're using. In syllables, 'J-U' is supposed to be 'Joo'" Not 'Juh', so yeah. / Yun is Yoon, Mun is Moon (this is my name, which means "culture" doing the same thing with an 'M'), and so forth."
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. You seem to be making the point, once again, that the Chinese and Korean romanisation systems (and hence their pronunciations of the same romanisation) are different. That's undeniable. See further up in this comment for what I'm trying to say about what that should mean for this name's entry.
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"In Chinese, the name is pronounced "Jun", THE SAME THING which rhymes with "fun" in English. Someone who says "fun" in English says the exact same thing for this name in Chinese, just with a 'J'."
Nope, the '-un' in Mandarin Chinese is pronounced vastly differently from that in English. To borrow from the International Phonetic Alphabet, Chinese Pinyin 'Jun' (tones undifferentiated) is [tɕyn], while English 'fun' is [fʌn]. There is a world of difference between the vowels (and I'm not starting on the consonants because that was never the bone of contention). An English speaker without prior Mandarin Chinese background attempting to calque their pronunciation of the name on that of the word "fun" would most likely find themselves saying [ʤʌn], which isn't at all right, not when confronted with a Mandarin Chinese speaker.
In my earlier comment I said that "There's no rhyme with 'gun' in English, pinyin 'gun' doesn't rhyme with pinyin 'Jun', and 'fun' doesn't exist as a pinyin combination. Unless you're referring to a dialectal pronunciation, I don't see how your statement can be true, and Chinese was one of my mother tongues." Now -- thanks to your pointing it out -- I see how that can be a possible source of confusion. Let me try to clear that up:
In English, 'fun' and 'gun' rhyme (in IPA, they're transcribed as [fʌn] and [gʌn] respectively).
In Mandarin Chinese, we have no such thing because
+ Pinyin 'Jun' (tones undifferentiated) is [tɕyn], approximatable by this site's pronunciation guide as 'zhuyn' ([ʒyn])
+ Pinyin 'gun' (again, tones undifferentiated) is [ku̯ən] (can't find any possible approximations for this one in this site's pronunciation guide, though)
+ 'fun' does not exist in Pinyin.
I brought in these examples to try to drive home the point that the pronunciation of the Chinese syllable isn't calquable on English.
"In Mandarin Chinese, a common name is "JUN", but in Korean it is "JOON". They are the same character, which makes things even worse."
I have nothing to say to the contrary here. A shared romanisation is indeed cause for confusion, as is a shared spelling. That's why I was pushing for a split, as happened with "Jean (1)" and "Jean (2)" -- in both cases, the pairs of names look alike and have the same origin/basis, but in the case of the "Jean" names, one is used predominantly by French speakers and is pronounced closer to "John", while the other sounds like "gene" and is used primarily by English speakers. It's the same with the "Jun" names -- they likely have the same bases and the same meanings (and if they don't, that's even worse) one is used by Chinese speakers, the other by Korean speakers, and both have their own pronunciations.
"My parents told me in Cantonese it is not like that at all, it's actually "Gwun", but still isn't that the same just with a diff first sound? 'G' instead of 'J'."
I can't tell you about that since I don't know Cantonese. I'm going to be bold and work based on the assumption that this example of yours is correct, in which case you see that even in Cantonese, the pronunciation of the word/name is not at all calquable on English.
"Trust me, I spoke to people born and raised in both China and Korea and they admit this difference is confusing but obvious. Some of them didn't even know it 'til I pointed it out."
... I'm ethnically Chinese and raised on Mandarin Chinese and English, and my homeland's been swept by quite a few waves of K-fever (basically, mass infatuation over all things Korean), so I know I can trust you on this particular statement.
"Also in Korean they do this with a lot of other names. One Korean-born student told me, "Well yes, that is fair to say. It depends on which pronunciation system you're using. In syllables, 'J-U' is supposed to be 'Joo'" Not 'Juh', so yeah. / Yun is Yoon, Mun is Moon (this is my name, which means "culture" doing the same thing with an 'M'), and so forth."
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. You seem to be making the point, once again, that the Chinese and Korean romanisation systems (and hence their pronunciations of the same romanisation) are different. That's undeniable. See further up in this comment for what I'm trying to say about what that should mean for this name's entry.
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Yes, the PINYIN is different. The reason I said that I don't care about it is because you seem to be very concerned with how they spell it out and use it. But actually, if it's not 100%, it's still CLOSER to the English pronunciation of "fun". It's like another Chinese name, Yu. I remember people were saying "It's not 'You' even though it looks like it. It has a deeper sound at the end."
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
It is the same meaning. It is usually used as a male name which means "handsome".
My parents don't care about it much either, because it wasn't widely used when they were growing up. Nowadays things are different. In SEA countries, no one used Pinyin to Romanize.
I'm not saying that's bad, I agree it's not a good thing since you can't easily write Chinese on electronics, but they just didn't. They knew their characters.
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I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
It is the same meaning. It is usually used as a male name which means "handsome".
My parents don't care about it much either, because it wasn't widely used when they were growing up. Nowadays things are different. In SEA countries, no one used Pinyin to Romanize.
I'm not saying that's bad, I agree it's not a good thing since you can't easily write Chinese on electronics, but they just didn't. They knew their characters.
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@EstherTester I'm not really sure what's the argument between you and @seraphine_eternal but I'm pretty sure you need to learn PINYIN to understand how Chinese pronunciation works. I'm Chinese, been learning Chinese since young so I suppose if you really wish to clarify the correct pronunciation for some words, I can always help.
Jun, in Chinese, is not pronounced as 'Fun' with a 'J'. Well we all know 'Fun' sounds like 'Farn' without the 'R', but Jun is not 'Jarn' without the 'R'.
Confused? Okay, Jun is not pronounced as 'Joon' in Chinese. I know it has varying pronunciations in other languages like Japanese and Korean, but I'm 100% sure there is not a single word in Chinese that sounds like 'Joon'.
Fun sounds like 'Fan' in Chinese, which is commonly known as Rice. Jun however, sounds more like Jün in PINYIN, with the two dots above the 'u'. If you're not sure about PINYIN, the closest word I can think of in English that sounds like Jun is Jean. It's really complicated because English and Chinese pronunciations are very very different.
I can assure you that Jun is not pronounced as 'Joon'! :)
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Jun, in Chinese, is not pronounced as 'Fun' with a 'J'. Well we all know 'Fun' sounds like 'Farn' without the 'R', but Jun is not 'Jarn' without the 'R'.
Confused? Okay, Jun is not pronounced as 'Joon' in Chinese. I know it has varying pronunciations in other languages like Japanese and Korean, but I'm 100% sure there is not a single word in Chinese that sounds like 'Joon'.
Fun sounds like 'Fan' in Chinese, which is commonly known as Rice. Jun however, sounds more like Jün in PINYIN, with the two dots above the 'u'. If you're not sure about PINYIN, the closest word I can think of in English that sounds like Jun is Jean. It's really complicated because English and Chinese pronunciations are very very different.
I can assure you that Jun is not pronounced as 'Joon'! :)
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"Yes, the PINYIN is different."
In terms of the number of language systems that pronounce the syllable one way or another, I agree, it is the outlier. At the same time, you can't ignore it because it's being used by a sizeable number of people.
"The reason I said that I don't care about it is because you seem to be very concerned with how they spell it out and use it. But actually, if it's not 100%, it's still CLOSER to the English pronunciation of 'fun'. It's like another Chinese name, Yu. I remember people were saying 'It's not 'You' even though it looks like it. It has a deeper sound at the end.'"
Anything that contains an ü in its Pinyin isn't that obvious to non-Sinophones.* That I understand. The reason why I'm insisting so vehemently is because, when you say "it's pronounced as / like [...]", people take that to be the standard; in this case, what you first proposed isn't a standard pronunciation in Chinese. It would be better to differentiate original-language pronunciations from pronunciations found in societies where said original languages aren't spoken (as main languages, whether official or national). I honestly hope we're clear on that. That's been my main thrust, always.
* "A deeper sound"? Interesting perception. It merits an investigation.
"My parents don't care about it much either, because it wasn't widely used when they were growing up. Nowadays things are different."
Your folks didn't care much about the Pinyin because they didn't grow up with it. That is fine. But it now is something that's used by a large chunk of the world's population. (Thank you for acknowledging that.)
Please also note that this site is available on the Internet, which is international by definition. Given that it's one of the best name sites that exist out there, it's pretty authoritative. So, as much as possible, it shouldn't contain mistakes.
"In SEA no one used Pinyin to romanise", yes, because the sinograms were adopted by the Southeast Asian countries, with pronunciations / phonetic evolutions proper to those societies. I don't expect them to give up their languages entirely.
"I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not."
... I don't have that intention. Which of my remarks did you take as sarcasm-tinged ones?
"It is the same meaning. It is usually used as a male name which means 'handsome'."
Yes, in general (we already have an exception on the name's main entry). The same goes with the example of the two "Jean"s. I'm not sure if you understood me correctly on that one.
"I'm not saying that's bad, I agree it's not a good thing since you can't easily write Chinese on electronics, but they just didn't. They knew their characters."
I'm not sure what your last point's about. Could you clarify or elaborate, please? I know you were talking about your parents...
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In terms of the number of language systems that pronounce the syllable one way or another, I agree, it is the outlier. At the same time, you can't ignore it because it's being used by a sizeable number of people.
"The reason I said that I don't care about it is because you seem to be very concerned with how they spell it out and use it. But actually, if it's not 100%, it's still CLOSER to the English pronunciation of 'fun'. It's like another Chinese name, Yu. I remember people were saying 'It's not 'You' even though it looks like it. It has a deeper sound at the end.'"
Anything that contains an ü in its Pinyin isn't that obvious to non-Sinophones.* That I understand. The reason why I'm insisting so vehemently is because, when you say "it's pronounced as / like [...]", people take that to be the standard; in this case, what you first proposed isn't a standard pronunciation in Chinese. It would be better to differentiate original-language pronunciations from pronunciations found in societies where said original languages aren't spoken (as main languages, whether official or national). I honestly hope we're clear on that. That's been my main thrust, always.
* "A deeper sound"? Interesting perception. It merits an investigation.
"My parents don't care about it much either, because it wasn't widely used when they were growing up. Nowadays things are different."
Your folks didn't care much about the Pinyin because they didn't grow up with it. That is fine. But it now is something that's used by a large chunk of the world's population. (Thank you for acknowledging that.)
Please also note that this site is available on the Internet, which is international by definition. Given that it's one of the best name sites that exist out there, it's pretty authoritative. So, as much as possible, it shouldn't contain mistakes.
"In SEA no one used Pinyin to romanise", yes, because the sinograms were adopted by the Southeast Asian countries, with pronunciations / phonetic evolutions proper to those societies. I don't expect them to give up their languages entirely.
"I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not."
... I don't have that intention. Which of my remarks did you take as sarcasm-tinged ones?
"It is the same meaning. It is usually used as a male name which means 'handsome'."
Yes, in general (we already have an exception on the name's main entry). The same goes with the example of the two "Jean"s. I'm not sure if you understood me correctly on that one.
"I'm not saying that's bad, I agree it's not a good thing since you can't easily write Chinese on electronics, but they just didn't. They knew their characters."
I'm not sure what your last point's about. Could you clarify or elaborate, please? I know you were talking about your parents...
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Pronounced "JOON", like the month.
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After a quick check with Google Translate's listen function, I would say this name sounds much closer to the English word "chin" for 俊 (jùn), and with a slightly longer vowel sound for 君 and 军 (both jūn). Not quite the same, but close.
It's still GT, though, so it's probably not perfect.