A group of young indigenous people has presented a petition to the interior ministry, calling for the right to use their indigenous names written in the Latin script.
Group members say that a requirement that they transliterate their names into similar-sounding Chinese characters distorts their name’s pronunciation and meaning and causes confusion. But they say that household registration offices have rejected their attempts to register their indigenous names as they are spelled in the Latin-based orthography of their mother tongues.
Group members say that the official requirement that they write their indigenous names with similar-sounding Chinese characters goes against the spirit of laws that promote and protect Taiwan’s indigenous languages, as well as the UN conventions on human rights.