Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Many comments are explicitly trying to “decipher” Cho Chang in Mandarin rather than considering the diverse background of Chinese-speaking diaspora. She can be a descendant of Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew, Canton, Wenzhou, Fuzhou… oh, and of course, Korean. There are countless combinations in these languages where Cho Chang is a valid name.
Cho Chang's portrayal in the books has often faced criticism for being stereotypical and lazily written, but upon further analysis, I realised that most arguments against her are either based on half-knowledge or are simply bad faith arguments. So, I decided to write a post clarifying some of the common misunderstandings regarding Cho Chang.
Their Seeker, Cho Chang, was the only girl on their team. She was shorter than Harry by about a head, and Harry couldn’t help noticing, nervous as he was, that she was extremely pretty. And here's how she is described in Goblet of Fire: and a little farther on they saw Cho Chang, a very pretty girl who played Seeker on the Ravenclaw team.
People tend to associate "Cho Chang" with the old racist "Ching Chong" meme, but like, real names exist too. And the consonance is not what makes it racist. It's the racism. Associating a real Chinese name like Chang with an old racist meme is, I'm not going to say racist because there's no racist intent, but ignorant in my opinion.
First, Chang is an Asian (Chinese) surname, which means she's likely Chinese. Names and meanings are very important in Harry Potter. And, the actress is Asian. So yes, Cho Chang is definitively Asian. Second, yes, the movies are canon.
I don't mind book Cho Chang, but I'm not a fan of movie Cho Chang. It's the Scottish accent...I don't like it. It reminds me of Kelly MacDonald...and I can't stand her Scottish accent either. Edit: For the record... I'm Scottish so I'm desensitised to the appeal of most Scottish accents.
I happen to be frustrated by another post criticising Cho Chang's name that I just came across and I have to get this out. Let me start by saying that Cho Chang is a perfectly beautiful, normal name in Chinese. Chang is the romanisation of the Chinese surname 張 in both Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking countries except in Mainland China.
If my surname is Chang and I have a daughter I would be totally fine naming her Cho Chang in Chinese. Cho Chang in Chinese translation is 張(Chang)秋(Cho). 張(Chang) one of the most common surname. 秋(Cho) means autumn, which is a poetic and appropriate name for a woman. I honestly can't believe people are actually arguing over this.
To make Cho Chang work in Mandarin you have to modified it. Chang is popular, but the name itself is actually pretty old. In modern times it's written/sounds like Zhang. A variation of Cho actually is found for given names. Cho is replaced with Qiu because of the characters take the meaning of "autumn".
I have a headcanon about Cho Chang in the Cursed Child play/book. I firmly believe that Cho ended up with Harry in the alternate timeline. Let us consider that Cedric went to the Yule ball with Cho Chang, despite his defeat in the first task in the alternate timeline.