[QUOTE=mobo85]
Western-sounding first names and Asian-sounding last names, like Lucy Liu, Michelle Wie, etc.
[/QUOTE]
Whose names in Chinese and Korean happen to be Liu Yuling and Wie Seong-mi, despite both being American born.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Michelle Wie’s real name is Wie Seong-mi Hangul.
[/QUOTE]
Just Wie Seong-mi. The ‘hangul’ after her name in her Wikipedia article is pointing to the hangul spelling of her name.
[QUOTE=Merijeek]
And there are even more famous (and even more more more non-famous) Asians with Asian-sounding names.
What’s the point of this, again?
[/QUOTE]
To me, it just sounds peculiar.
It actually took me a while to figure out whether “Cho” or “Chang” was her surname, because both of those sound like family names to me. Assuming Chang is her family name and that she’s supposed to be of Chinese ancestry, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard any “Cho”-sounding character used singly as a given name. Also, while single-character given names are by no means unusual, two-character names are generally more common, at least in my experience, and would have lent the character more verisimilitude.
Of course, if her family name is “Cho”, then I would tend to think she might be Korean, and the given name “Chang” would be even more strange.
Hollywood seems incapable of casting plain little girls in roles that call for plain little girls. Little Miss Sunshine was a happy exception. WhyNot is right–Emma Watson was way too pretty to play Hermione. I never pictured Luna as a terribly attractive girl either.
This is one reason why I won’t be seeing the movie of The Golden Compass. I can’t bear to see what they’ll do to Lyra. She’s a mean, slightly scary, very tough little kid. I hate that they’re inevitably going to turn her into Pretty Miss Prissypants.
I’d agree that the name sounds like a mockery of Chinese speech, not that no one is called anything like that, but that people say stuff that does sound like Cho Chang when they are making fun of Chinese, and I got that without even knowing there was a mock(or mock-mock) character called Ching Chong (that was, however, the exact sound I was thinking of.)
[QUOTE=Tengu]
Whose names in Chinese and Korean happen to be Liu Yuling and Wie Seong-mi, despite both being American born.
Just Wie Seong-mi. The ‘hangul’ after her name in her Wikipedia article is pointing to the hangul spelling of her name.
[/QUOTE]
:smack: Thanks.
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
I’d agree that the name sounds like a mockery of Chinese speech, not that no one is called anything like that, but that people say stuff that does sound like Cho Chang when they are making fun of Chinese, and I got that without even knowing there was a mock(or mock-mock) character called Ching Chong (that was, however, the exact sound I was thinking of.)
[/QUOTE]
The thing is, although it’s a pretty lame name, I don’t think JKR was trying to make fun of Chinese; I think it was any combination of a) she doesn’t know very many (if any) people of Chinese ancestry, b) she was too lazy to do even a minimum amount of research for names, and/or c) she didn’t care enough about a relatively minor character to think it worth the bother.
Cho’s basic function in the story was to be a girlfriend. She’s lucky she didn’t end up getting called Dr. Girlfriend.
Well, if Cho constantly mixed l’s and r’s, had 4 inch fingernails, smoked opium, was a math wiz and kung fu master, and was constantly refered to as “inscrutable”, then I guess I could get onboard with the “stereotype” charge. But aside from her name she’s exactly like all the other characters in the book.
Again, if Seamus Finnegan constantly drank whiskey, got in bar fights, recited poetry, and ostentatiously prayed to the Virgin Mary then he’d be a stereotype. However, the character just has a stereotypical irish name, other than that he has no similarity to a stereotypical irishman.
You can fault Rowling for writing bland supporting characters, but the charge of racial stereotyping is simply ludicrous.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
“Chang” is the commonest surname in China and therefore the world, I once read in the Guiness Book of World Records.
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First, it’s “most common”
Second, I don’t think Chang is one of the top names. I think “Li” and “Wang” are by far the most common.
Actually, the list here looks pretty accurate to me.
[QUOTE=Only Mostly Dead]
and Kingsley Shacklebolt is highly efficient! (actually, somewhat disappointed in the look of the casting they did for Kingsley. I always pictured him to be a handsome bull of a black Englishman. Smooth, cultured. Like he could fit in within the PM’s office. Not so rugged and I guess “ethnic” as the picture on the Warner Bros. site. He looks like Morgan Freeman’s character in the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie.)
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I had always hoped for Samuel L. Jackson, but I suppose they wanted to keep the cast mostly British.
[QUOTE=Queen Bruin]
I had always hoped for Samuel L. Jackson, but I suppose they wanted to keep the cast mostly British.
[/QUOTE]
That would have kicked ass.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Hermione is the one they missed the boat on way back in the first movie, IMHO. That actress was too pretty from the start - Hermione was definitely written as unattractive, very specifically. Having a pretty Hermione from the start (even her hair wasn’t as out of control frizzy as described in the book) really deflated the scene at the ball when she’s transformed into a beauty.
[/QUOTE]
Ah the old “Ugly Ducking Transformed into a Knockout even though she isn’t ugly at all” trope. Guess it’s because Hollywood has no ugly young actresses…
Effing Flashplayer. Why won’t my computer download it? I hate my life.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
You can fault Rowling for writing bland supporting characters, but the charge of racial stereotyping is simply ludicrous.
[/QUOTE]
Seamus Finnegan has a stereotypical Irish name.
Cho Chang has a made-up-sounding “Chinese” name.
It’s not racial stereotyping, but it does seem a very poor effort that would have been simple to avoid, and was (for me, at least) quite jarring to read. Imagine the derision if the Irish character had been named “O’Toole Abernathy” instead.
[QUOTE=Gestalt]
<snip> I feel the same way about Emma Watson, actually.
<snip>
I also take issue with Umbridge’s look. Isn’t she toady looking with a big bow? That women merely looks a little frumpy.
[/QUOTE]
Strangely enough I always see Emma Watson in my mind when I pictured Dolores Umbridge. 
Actually her real name was Cheerio Meredith, but in the Andy Griffith show her name was Emma Watson. She would’ve been perfect, IMO, but unfortunately she’s long gone.
For some reason when picturing Tonks, I’d see Kelly Osbourne. Had to be the hair.
[QUOTE=asterion]
That would have kicked ass.
[/QUOTE]
Are you two serious? I thought he was totally jarring and distracting in the Star Wars prequels. He’s like Keanu Reeves or later-era Marlon Brando to me in that he has a very distinct speech pattern that he seems incapable of hiding. In a fantasy or sci-fi milieu (e.g. The Matrix), I find that really annoying.
[QUOTE=Pazu]
Cho Chang has a made-up-sounding “Chinese” name.
[/QUOTE]
I always remember, when comments like this arise, a comic I heard in the late 1970s riffing on the then-popular TV show “Hawaii 5-0.” He points out that during the opening credits, once we get past “Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett” and “James MacArthur as ‘Dann-o’ Williams” we’d see credits for the guys playing Hawaiian-born members of the team: “Kam Fong as Chin Ho.” The comic snickered at the absurdity of that – “Why even change the name?” But then he’d pause, and seem to realize, “There’s probably some Hawaiian guy named Song Lo watching the show now, thinking, ‘Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett? Why change name?’”
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
Are you two serious? I thought he was totally jarring and distracting in the Star Wars prequels. He’s like Keanu Reeves or later-era Marlon Brando to me in that he has a very distinct speech pattern that he seems incapable of hiding. In a fantasy or sci-fi milieu (e.g. The Matrix), I find that really annoying.
[/QUOTE]
I’m absolutely serious, otherwise I wouldn’t have posted it.
[QUOTE=Queen Bruin]
I had always hoped for Samuel L. Jackson, but I suppose they wanted to keep the cast mostly British.
[/QUOTE]
No no no, shoulda been that guy from Manchild and Doctor Who…whatsisname? Don Warrington. Or maybe Chiwetel Ejiofor, The Operative from Serenity, also in Dirty Pretty Things, Kinky Boots and Children of Men.
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
Are you two serious? I thought he was totally jarring and distracting in the Star Wars prequels. He’s like Keanu Reeves or later-era Marlon Brando to me in that he has a very distinct speech pattern that he seems incapable of hiding. In a fantasy or sci-fi milieu (e.g. The Matrix), I find that really annoying.
[/QUOTE]
I found Jackson jarring in Star Wars primarily because of this reason. I couldn’t separate the Jedi Master in a galaxy far, far away from the tough modern summabitch he usually plays. But Harry Potter is for the most part set on contemporary Earth even though it is fantasy. Had Rowling used American wizards in her writing, Jackson would fit in fine.