Ruzhen ?

[skylee]

I was in the British Museum the other day casually looking at all those exhibits from / on China and reading the captions ... nothing was particularly interesting until I came across the use of the term "Ruzhen" when referring to the 女真 / Nǚzhēn tribe. I mean why on earth was an "R" used here? All the other romanised terms were as far as I could see based on the standard Hanyu Pinyin scheme. First I thought it was a typo but then I saw it used again. Have I missed anything?

Photos here (click to enlarge) ->

Line 6　　　　　　　　Line 8

　　

Other questions I've asked about museum captions ->

Santiago Chinese coins

西戎 = Turks?

[Luobot]

Possibly the “R” sound came from “ManChuRian” – but this is just a WAG.

Nüzhen or Manzuren 女真 (nü3 zhen1), 滿族人 (man3 zu2 ren2), 滿人 (man3 ren2) Manchuria and northern portion of Inner Mongolia early 10th century to present, established Jin Dynasty and Qing Dynasty Jurchen, Mancho, Manchus or Manchurian Since mid 17th century, first encountered by Russians Largest minority ethnic group in Dongbei region or Manchuria. Their culture has very much assimilated with the Han but some distinctive aspects still remain.

see here

btw - would you translate 女真 (nü3 zhen1) as "Real Women" ?

[in_lab]

It doesn't answer the question, but here's some more wikipedia stuff:

The standard English version of the name, "Jurchen," is an Anglicized transliteration of the Mongolian equivalent of the Jurchen term jušen (Mongolian: Jürchen, plural form Jürched), and may have made it to the West via Mongolian texts.[2] A less common English transliteration is "Jurched".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurchens