Herbert Allen Giles (8 December, 1845 - 13 February, 1935) was a British linguist who modified a Mandarin Chinese Romanization system established by Thomas Wade earlier, resulting in the Wade-Giles Chinese transliteration system.

Giles was a diplomat to China (1867 – 1892) as British Consul at Ningpo who later became the second professor of Chinese at Cambridge, succeeding Sir Thomas Wade, after living in Aberdeen, Scotland.

He spent a brief time at Fort Santo Domingo (1885-1888) in Tamsui, Taiwan.

His publications include:

• Using Examples to Learn the Spoken Language (Yuxue Jiuyu) (1873)
• Using Examples to Learn the Written Language (Zixue Jiuyu) (1874)
• 'Chinese Sketches' Book Description: 204pp.,1876. First Edition. Giles, a scholar and linguist, is best known for his Chinese- English Dictionary, yet Chinese Sketches is an earlier and scarcer work. Work contains his early collection of short essays based upon his frequent travels to Chinese cities. (source ABEBOOKS.COM)
• Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1880, London)
  • English translation of 164 stories (out of 431) from Pu Songling's collection of ghost and fantastic folk tales, Liaozhai Zhiyi.
• The 1415-page A Chinese-English Dictionary (Hua-Ying Zidian) (1892, Shanghai; 1912, London)
  • containing Mandarin and nine southern dialects, such as Hakka, Cantonese, and Min
• Chuang Tzǔ: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer (1926, Shanghai)
• The posthumously published, though never in English, encyclopedia, The Chinese and Their Food (Zhonghua Fanshi) (1947, Shanghai)

Postal System Pinyin is also based on the Wade-Giles system described in A Chinese-English Dictionary.

External links

• Works by Herbert Giles at Romanization.com
• Images of Giles
• Address by his Great Grandson

1845 births | 1935 deaths | Sinologists | British people in China

Herbert Giles