Why don't we use phonetic spelling of foreign names anymore.  For example, if your name is pronounced "wen", but spelled Nguyen (I think that's right), how is anyone supposed to pronounce the name properly?  It certainly isn't spelled that way in Vietnamese.  

It would seem to me that someone would want their name to be pronounced correctly rather than adhere to some arbitrary transliteration.  Not to mention that it would be easier for every one else to figure out just what the hell is being said and written.

This seems mostly to be a problem with Asian names, and only recently.  

We spell Al Qaeda, for example, the way it's pronounced in Arabic, don't we?

Have several friends named "Ng". Pronounced Ing.

The Hungarian family name "Nagy" is pronounced "notch" in Hungary.
And don't even ask me how /my/ name gets pronounced...

Let me guess, 'kar ninety ate'!

Is that close?

Eric The(Sassy)Hun[>]:)]

Then we should use phonetic spelling for such word as:

Psychology
Gnat
Know

Names such as

Reich which can be pronounced as either rike rees
Knudsen which pronounced without the K
Schmidt which is pronounced the same as smith

and many other anglo names with funky pronounciations and silent letters.

Quick and simple, "Doom on you."

[:)]

Well, I don't think my point was that ALL names should be spelled phonetically.  

I guess that the phenomena is most pronounced where the name is natively spelled in writing wholly different from Latin based writing.  i.e. Chinese, Sanskrit, or some other similar type of written language.  At least for German, and similar others, you can almost figure out that Reich is pronounced "rike."  

Some of these (Chinese especially) transliterations are completely confounding and make zero sense.  Japanese, by contrast, usually seems to bear a reasonable resemblance when spoken from an English spelling to the Japanese pronunciation.

I just thing it makes sense to be able to read the name in English, especially when English characters are so different from say, Chinese characters, and then have the pronunciation bear a reasonable resemblance to the native one.

Corp. Chaos--Doom on you too!  ;)