Pinyin Please

May I ask that the names of the Emperors are added in Pinyin to the list please.

Ok, I can do that. I thought having a long list of Chinese names in pinyin would appear gibberish (and no different than seeing Chinese characters), and give the wrong impression that all Chinese sound the same. But for emperors they truly are using the same honorifics.

I haven't got around editing all the names using the multi-lingual feature. For the time being, I'm settled with the convention that

English: first and last names blank, display name = personal name, Emperor XX of XX (dynasty) followed by Chinese characters.

Chinese (traditional): fill out as they should.

Now that the list of project profiles has been significantly enhanced, it makes sense to add all Emperors (including deposed, puppets, ...) to the project, and eventually add birth/death places and short bios. Any help I can get would be great.

I could help if I knew who's who. I don't read Chinese but teach Chinese History in High School so I can help with English Bios.

Hi Charmaine,

It'd be great if you could help with the Tang emperors. Wikipedia is very reliable for Tang history, as someone who is very knowledgeable has written extensively of all aspects of this period.

I believe adding birth/death/burial locations (using modern names in pinyin suggested by google) and cause of death would be fantastic. I'm no big fan of entering Western dates for Chinese historical figures (and I would in fact use the AD years only for the corresponding lunar year), but I won't take away information if you chose to enter it.

I would prefer bios that are succinct, so that in a list of profiles the 3-line preview would give the most important aspect of who he was. If you could trim the intro section of wikipedia articles, that's would be great!

If I find equally reliable sources for other dynasties, I'll let you know.

I must say that it's must be very hard to teach Chinese history without knowing Chinese. I hope you don't get discouraged by all the similar-sounding names.

The nice thing about teaching Chinese History and not knowing much about it is that the students do a lot of research because I asked them to teach me. They are learning without even realizing it.