Confucius Say

A well-intentioned ballot translation effort in Boston gives us some insight into candidates' names.

Galvin says the federal Justice Department is pressuring Boston election officials to translate candidates' names into Chinese characters in precincts with prominent Chinese-speaking populations... translators have resorted to finding characters that most closely match the sound of each syllable in [each candidate's] name. The problem is that there are many different characters that could be used to match the sound of each syllable, and many different meanings for each character.

Some of the renderings:

Mitt Romney	...	Sticky Rice
Fred Thompson	...	Virtue Soup
Barack Obama	...	Oh Bus Horse
Thomas Menino	...	Barbarian No Mind of His Own

Wanted: someone who will set up a cool internet-feature that will let you plug in your (English) name and spit out its Chinese transliteration and meaning. This could be very revealing. I got a few more from a Chinese classmate:

[my name]	...	Sand and Forest
George Bush	...	What Cloth?
Rudy Giuliani	...	Ruling Land Pig Benefits Security Nun

Hat tip to James Taranto at BOTWT.