The Leaky Cauldron

Let me start by saying that Cho Chang is a perfectly beautiful, normal name in Chinese.

Chang is the romanisation of the Chinese surname 張 in both Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking countries except in Mainland China. It has a more common variation "Cheung" which happens to be another Cantonese romanisation. 張 is the third most common surname in Taiwan, the fourth most common surname in PRC and the most common surname in Shanghai but it is also a Korean surname. Zhang is the romanisation of 張 using Putonghua (Mandarin) pin-yin system which is mostly only used in mainland China. 張 is more commonly romanised as "Chong" and "Cheong" in Singapore and Malaysia. Chang and Cheung is also the romanisation of the Chinese surname 章 in Cantonese.

Cho is the romanisation of many Chinese characters including 秋, 卓, 草, 曹, 楚, 早, 祖 in Cantonese. 秋，卓，楚，早 are the ones more commonly used in given names so I am only going to elaborate on these.

秋 originally means plentiful harvest but it can also mean "autumn". 卓 means "excellence, outstanding; profound; brilliant; lofty" but it is more commonly used in 2-character given names. Just so you know, 卓 is also a Chinese/Korean surname. 楚 is the name of an ancient Chinese state and originally means thorns, but it can also mean "arranged in order", "well-dressed", "a lovely lady" or "clarity". 早 just means "the morning" but I happen to know someone with that given name but with a different surname.

Cho Chang is translated as 張秋 in Chinese, which basically means "Autumn Chang". I actually happen to know someone from primary school with that exact same name and romanisation when the Harry Potter movies were still coming out. This classmate of mine was incredibly disappointed by the fact that she got sorted into Hufflepuff instead of Ravenclaw in that Pottermore sorting quiz. As a kid, I used to have a headcanon that Cho Chang was a Hongkonger who moved to the UK due to the worsening political climate before the 1997 Handover as it was very common for Hong Kong families to emigrate to the UK back in the 80s to 90s. That would explain why Cho Chang didn't have an anglicised name as she was not born in the UK and most people from Hong Kong back then rarely put their anglicised given name as their legal name.

I have actually never heard from anyone I know who grew up in Chinese-speaking countries or speak Chinese criticise this name. Cho Chang is a very commonly adored character in Chinese-speaking countries and the only thing I have seen people complain about her is her lacking characterisation or the fact that she didn't end up with Harry. I only learned that people didn't like this name after moving to an English-speaking country for university and I am tired of having to explain this repeatedly.

It should be noted that I am going by the Hong Kong Goverment Cantonese Romanisation system here. You can look it up on Wikipedia if you are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Government_Cantonese_Romanisation.

https://old.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/p0cbla/cho_chang_it_is_a_perfectly_beautiful_name/