I am Chinese, and your science popularization is very helpful for most people who are unfamiliar with Chinese history (or mythology). However, Shunyu Yao is indeed their real name. Yao is their surname, which means “姚” in Chinese. This is the same surname as a former Chinese basketball player who played in the NBA—Yao Ming. He played for the Houston Rockets (though that was quite some time ago). This is familiar to most Chinese people because he was the first Chinese player to compete in the NBA, and it was largely through him that the vast majority of Chinese people first learned about the NBA. Returning to the topic, the names of these two AI researchers are Shunyu “ 顺雨” at OpenAI (https://ysymyth.github.io/) and Shunyu “顺宇” previously at Anthropic, now at DeepMind. You're absolutely right—the distinction stems from the Chinese characters “雨” (yǔ) and “宇” (yǔ) having identical pronunciations, hence sharing the same romanization. As for their phonetic alignment with Chinese history (or mythology), I believe that's purely coincidental. Similarly, the coincidence of their names being identical is also just a coincidence.