Chinese checkers finishers. The rules are simple, so even young children can play. Despite its name, the game is not a variation of checkers, nor did it originate in China or any part of Asia (whereas the game 象棋 "xiangqi", or "Chinese chess", is from China). The game was invented in Germany in 1892 under the name "Stern-Halma" as a variation of the older American game Halma. The "Stern" (German for "star") refers to the board's star shape (in contrast to the square board used in Halma). The name "Chinese Checkers" originated in the United States as a marketing scheme by Bill
Chinese name abroad, the Chinese often romanize according to the sounds of their own local Chinese dialect or lingua franca or language mostly spoken in the area or country they settled into, particularly Cantonese, Hokkien, and Hakka. This occurs amid a plethora of competing romanization systems. In Hong Kong, many Chinese who grew up under the British occupation adopted English spelling conventions for their names: "Lee" for 李, "Shaw" for 邵, and so forth. In Macau, Chinese names are similarly sometimes still transliterated based on Portuguese orthography and Yuetping. The Chinese from Hong Kong, Macau and the diaspora communities in Malaysia and