What is my name?
My parents named me 杜世杰, written Dù Shìjié in pinyin . I chose Ryan for use in English-speaking settings. In publications, I combine the two: Ryan Shìjié Dù.
To typeset my name in LaTeX, use Ryan Sh\`iji\'e D\`u.
Why the tone marks?
Mandarin is a tonal language, and pinyin tone marks distinguish pronunciations that would otherwise be written alike. Without them, it is harder to tell how to say my name.
Tone marks also help distinguish names. Many Chinese characters share a pronunciation, so different names can already look identical in romanization. Removing the tones collapses even more distinctions. I keep the marks to preserve some of my name’s distinctiveness.
Typing tone marks can take an extra step, but modern software generally supports accented letters. LaTeX does too, as the example above shows, and names with diacritics are already common in academic writing.
I write from my experience as a Mandarin speaker using hànyǔ pīnyīn, not on behalf of speakers of every Chinese language. If your name is romanized in pinyin, I hope you’ll consider keeping its tone marks in print.