how to pronunciate 李滄濤

[hays]

Hi Elmer,

Those two names are written in 'Regeringsalmanak der Nederlandsch Indie' 1816-1942. Together with all other names of Chinese Officer.
Most of them are names of public figures, including Chinese Officer in every towns and cities. Sometimes they have also a list of of landowner or shipowner in some area.
Too bad I have not checked in Jombang area, but you can try yourself by reading the book in the Library (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, there are a complete set of them).

Regards,
Steve

[SimL]

Wow, how nice to have famous ancestors - envy, envy! .

Mine were not famous at all. On this latest holiday, I went to meet one of my aunts (a cousin of my father's) and learnt that her husband has famous ancestors. Her husband's father (or grandfather) was such a prominent person in Penang society that he entertained a minister who served in Henry Puyi's (the last Qing Emperor's) cabinet, when he (the minister) was on a visit to Penang!

Apparently, this is documented in two big scrolls of calligraphy, which the minister personally wrote for his host, praising the beauty of Penang and thanking his host for his hospitality. This was all explained to me when my aunt explained the significance of the scrolls.

Sadly, these are "in-law" relatives of mine, not blood relations!

Regards,
Sim.

[SimL]

... I visited 10 graveyards...

Gosh, that's very impressive!

I was in only 4 cemeteries - one in Seremban and in two in Sitiawan (my mother's side of the family), and one in Penang (my father's side of the family).


Mother's side

They are Chinese-educated "sin-kheks" from 惠安, and Christian.

I managed to find about 12 graves for my relatives on this side.

I found it interesting to see that in my mother's family, up to the 1950's, it was very common for the main sentence of the grave inscription to read:

<X X X> 之墓

This style seems to have slowly gone out of fashion after about 1950.

This means that almost everybody in my grandparents' generation (roughly 1900-1980) uses this formula, and nobody in my mother's generation (roughly 1920-now) uses it. For the later generation, the main sentence tends to have just the name, and then the words 息安 after the name.

One aspect I found frustrating in the older graves was that for many of the women their actual name was not on the grave. Instead, the main sentence of the grave inscription reads:

<X X X> 牧師娘之墓

where <X X X> is the name of her husband. "牧師娘" because many of them were (Methodist) pastors - indeed, there turned out to be have been 16(!) pastors in the family in total (many still living).

The sad thing about this style is that I am now unable to find out how my great-grandmother's name is written in Chinese characters, because it's not on the grave, and there is no one else left alive whom I can ask.


Father's side

They are English-educated Penang Baba's and practice the usual mix of Buddhism/Taoism/Chinese Folk Religion.

I was able to find only 2 graves on my father's side. This is partly because a lot of them were cremated and don't have graves. Instead they have "ancestral tablets", standing in a large memorial hall in Penang (in the Phor Tay Institution, for those people who know it).

This is also a pity from the point of view of family research, as the tablets seem to hold a lot less information than grave inscriptions. For example, both my paternal grandparents have nothing written on their tablets besides their name - no date of birth or death, no village of origin in China, no names of descendents. [This lack of the names of the descendents might be because the whole extended family was totally unable to read Chinese, so working out the characters for the children's names (and the place of origin in China) might have been too difficult for them.]

The fact that I could find only two graves means that it's difficult for me to make any generalizations about grave inscriptions from my father's side. The only thing that I can say is that for the two graves in question, the 之墓 formulation is not used (but not because they are "modern" graves - they are both quite old graves). Instead the formulation is just <name, honorary title> 墓 (i.e. no 之). I find this linguistically odd (without the 之), though that could be purely due to my ignorance of Chinese.

I would be very grateful for any comments on any/all these features. Duaaagiii, if you have experience with grave inscriptions in other Hokkien speaking communities, it would be very interesting to hear about it.

Sim.

[hays]

Wow, how nice to have famous ancestors - envy, envy! .

During Dutch colony time, the local government gaves some rank to some rich chinese an officer rank. The highest was Major, which were only in big cities like Batavia (Jakarta), Semarang and Surabaya in Java. Others had Captain and or Leutenant. In some bigger cities there were also chinese councils and beside inning the tax those officers did also as judges for family affairs for the chinese in the city.

Normally they did many charities in the local chinese temple, so it is possible that Elmer can get more information in the local chinese temple in Jombang. I think, it is lesss difficult to search for family tree when the family was rich before. Because in common, rich people had time to write family tree or at least made some notition. For poor family, I think it was more difficult since they have no time even to think about making family tree.

Happy Chinese New Year, Sin Chun Kiong Hie.
Steve

[duaaagiii]

This means that almost everybody in my grandparents' generation (roughly 1900-1980) uses this formula, and nobody in my mother's generation (roughly 1920-now) uses it. For the later generation, the main sentence tends to have just the name, and then the words 息安 after the name.

I wonder if 息安 is due to Western influence-- a sinification of "R.I.P."? I've always seen the -之墓 format being used.

The fact that I could find only two graves means that it's difficult for me to make any generalizations about grave inscriptions from my father's side. The only thing that I can say is that for the two graves in question, the 之墓 formulation is not used (but not because they are "modern" graves - they are both quite old graves). Instead the formulation is just <name, honorary title> 墓 (i.e. no 之). I find this linguistically odd (without the 之), though that could be purely due to my ignorance of Chinese.

It is okay either way, although including 之 seems to be the norm (and it sounds more natural when being read out loud).

[SimL]

I wonder if 息安 is due to Western influence-- a sinification of "R.I.P."? I've always seen the -之墓 format being used.

Hi duaaagiii,

Thanks for your comments. Yes, I agree 100%. That it was Western influence was also one of my first thoughts.

I've always equated being open to Western influences as being characteristic of my father's English-educated baba family, and being more conservatively traditional Chinese with my mother's Chinese-educated sin-khek family.

I still think this was generally true - just from the fact that speaking English gave them better access to Western culture. The only exception was in the area of religion and "cultural practice". There, the babas hung on to their traditions more strongly (perhaps) because they were not subject to the new ideas from the May Fourth Movement, with its ideas about the need to renew Chinese culture, and get rid of the old.

That's why my father's side have only traditional graves, whereas my mother's side, being Christian, came into a lot of contact with English and American missionaries. I think that this 息安 is indeed as a result of this influence.

Sim.
P.S. I came across a very interesting sentence / paragraph relating to this subject in that book about Overseas Chinese that I mentioned in another posting. I'll post the quote if I can find it again.