Translation

[jackdaw]

Hi forumers,

Please help me to translate the following Chinese name to Hokkien dialect (preferably in Huian) and in Singaporean/Malaysian spelling:

Traditional Chinese: 趙 縣 ( 縣 )
Simplified Chinese: 赵 縣

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
jackdaw

[SimL]

http://www.internationalscientific.org/ gives "tio7 koan7", with no variants, so this might be what it is in Hui-an. I notice that the last time someone asked for a name to be transcribed, nobody else replied, so I'm replying this time so that you at least have *an* answer, even if I can't be sure it's the correct answer. [Call me old-fashioned, but if someone posts a question and I give an answer, I feel that it's polite to at least say "thanks", which is what the other person didn't bother to do.]

Transcribed into Singaporean/Malaysian spelling, it would be "Teo(h) Kwan" or "Teo(h) Kuan". As far as the tones are concerned, if you pronounce both syllables to have the same tone as "u" (= to have), or "hi" (= "ear") i.e. a lowish tone which neither rises nor falls very sharply, then you'd be saying it *approximately* correctly.

[jackdaw]

SimL,

THANKS very much for your answer.

The reason I am asking is that both my grandparents' graves in Singapore will be exhumed very soon. I was asked to provide my grandma's chinese name for the description on the urn to be placed in the columbarium. But her grave is a very old one and does not have any chinese inscription on it. She died during WWII and only got a tombstone with numbers on it. All I know is that her name is spelled as Tio Kio obtained from my one of dad's official docs. However, I managed to get the chinese name from the back of a faded photograph. There are many names written at the back of the said photo but this one looks the closest because it consist of two characters instead of the usual three character name. I, myself being a chinese illeterate and barely know a few Hokkien words, had painfully search the chinese characters from the online dictionary can came out with 'Zhao Xian' which is very different from the romanised 'Tio Kio'. By any chance the 'Kuan' can also be spelled as 'Kio' instead. Hope you or someone else can confirm this.

Best Regards,
jackdaw

[xng]

As far as I know, all hokkien has 3 characters for name as the generation name is important.

It is only for modern northerners that they have 2 characters.

Could it be it is the last 2 names for your grandma instead ?

[niuc]

hi Jackdaw

趙縣 literally means the county of Zhao4 (Tio7). It is quite uncommon to be a person's name. 縣 can be pronounced as kuan7 or kuai*7 (asteriks signifies nasal vowel), but I never came across it as kio.

[SimL]

Hi Jackdaw,

Thanks for the background information. I'm always happy to get to know something about the reason for a question, so thank you very much for sharing that with us.


Hi Niuc,

Thank you for the additional information. Because my personal knowledge of Hokkien is mostly limited to Penang Hokkien (and pretty limited even there), I'm very grateful when others who know a lot about other forms of Hokkien share that knowledge here.


Hi xng,

In my experience, the 3-character name ("surname, generation name, personal name" or "surname, personal name, generation name") was indeed overwhelmingly common in Malaysia/Singapore up to the 80s (I've no idea how things are there now). All my cousins, uncles, aunts on my Penang Hokkien (paternal) side have 3-character names. In my entire primary and secondary school time there, all my Chinese schoolmates had 3-character names. I remember one of the teachers in the school had only a 2-character name ("surname, personal name"), and this was the source of comment among my friends when we first heard it. It was then explained to me that "some Chinese have this system of names", but I think we all found it a bit odd. Being kids, we never investigated it any further, so I don't know what that teacher's background was. He might have been a Northern Chinese or a Taiwanese with KMT/mainland roots, who happened to live in Malaysia, or there might have been southern Chinese who actually did use this system.

I'll do a bit more investigation and report back on this Forum later (one of my uncles has drawn up extensive family trees for my Amoy/Hui-uaN (maternal) side, so I can look up to about 4-5 generations, with hundreds of, maybe more than a thousand names). I didn't know them very well, because few of them lived in Penang in my youth. Furthermore, this uncle's research tracked down many more distant branches of the family which one usually wouldn't know anyway.

[niuc]

Hi Sim

You are most welcome. I'm always glad to read and learn from your & everyone's postings too

About personal name, from what I know, my grandaunt (grandmother's younger sister) had one character given name. She was called by that name (surname + 1 char). But I am not sure if that was her formal name, as my grandmother had surname + 2 char given name. It's kinda odd to have different types of given name (1 char vs 2 char) among sisters.

[xng]

delete

[xng]

Hi xng,

In my experience, the 3-character name ("surname, generation name, personal name" or "surname, personal name, generation name") was indeed overwhelmingly common in Malaysia/Singapore up to the 80s (I've no idea how things are there now).

As what niuc pointed out, the 2 chinese characters 趙 縣 may not be your grandma's name but a place/county in China where they lived.

Usually, a female would have girl's name, 縣 doesn't sound female.

The 3 character name is a traditional chinese custom to preserve the generation name and is important. I've yet to find any Han chinese in Malaysia without the generation name. Of course, non han chinese can have 2 or 4 characters.

If I am not mistaken, it was only during the cultural revolution in China that the govt decided to destroy all chinese cultures. So they simplify everything (writing) including the name. But this happened mostly in Northern china.

[SimL]

Hi Jackdaw,

There seems to be considerable evidence to support the idea that your grandmother might have had a 2-character name. (But of course, what niuc and xng say about 趙縣 not seeming to be a personal name and specifically not seeming to be a girl's personal name are very valid comments too.)

Looking at the Fang/Hong (方) family trees, it would seem that 2-character names were known for people born before 1900 up to (even) the 1950's. It was even relatively common before 1900, not at all uncommon in the early 1900's (though perhaps not as common as 3-character names), getting rarer and rarer as the century progressed. After the mid-20th century, they are completely unknown in this family tree.

For example, if one looks at:

http://web.me.com/adrianefang/Fang_Fami ... harts.html

These are the earliest traceable ancestors of this family tree, and the people shown there are all born before 1900 (possibly even before 1850). One can see that there was a considerable number of people with 2-character names: Hong Wee, Hong Yen, Hong Chun, Hong Gim, Hong Sio, Hong Sim, Hong Chu, Hong Neng, Hong Kwan. Based on this chart, one might even say that 2-character names were more common than 3-character names.

One can look at just the descendents of two of them, say Hong Yen and Hong Gim:

http://web.me.com/adrianefang/Fang_Fami ... es/Yen.pdf
http://web.me.com/adrianefang/Fang_Fami ... es/Gim.pdf

Here, roughly, the pink and red generations were born before 1900, the yellow generation around 1900, the green generation around 1925, the light blue generation around 1950, and the dark blue generation around 1975. This is only a VERY rough estimate, and based on my own immediate family, with I myself being one of the light blue generation, born in 1958. I say this is very rough because, of course, as the tree spreads, the difference in age from the oldest person of one generation to the youngest person of the "same" generation gets greater and greater (so it gets harder and harder to say what approximate year a generation was born in).

Anyway, one can see the following individuals had 2-character names. Spouses (= non-Fangs) are given in square-brackets:

In the Hong Yen tree:

1 (1850). Pink generation: Hong Yen
2 (1875). Red generation: -
3 (1900). Yellow generation: Fang Hwan, Fang Nee [+ Su Chin]
4 (1925). Green generation: Hong Liu [+ Thong Mooi, Koh Ber, Chen Mei, Mao Ling]
5 (1950). Light Blue generation: [+ Lee Lai]
6 (1975). Dark Blue generation: -

In the Hong Gim tree:

1 (1850). Pink generation: Hong Gim
2 (1875). Red generation: [+ Tan Tau]
3 (1900). Yellow generation: Hong Tiu [+ Tan Lam, Tan Hsin, Ong Seung]
4 (1925). Green generation: [+ Ong Lan, Lim Eng]
5 (1950). Light Blue generation: [+ Ong Eng, Ong Soon, Ong Swan]
6 (1975). Dark Blue generation: Hong Yong [+ Ong Yi]

---

Bear in mind that with each new generation, there are 4-5 times more individuals, so the fact that there are more 2-character names in the Green generation than the Yellow generation (for Hong Yen's descendents), and more 2-character names in the Yellow generation than the Red generation (for Hong Gim's descendents) doesn't mean that these 2-character names became more common. On the contrary, in comparison to the number of individuals in that generation, one can see that the number of 2-character names actually decreases dramatically with each new generation.

This family originated from 惠安 (Mandarin Hui-an, Hokkien Hui-uaN), so probably 90% of the individuals listed here are of Hui-uaN extraction (the spouses could well have come from somewhere else). So, the bottom line seems to be that 2-character names were certainly known for earlier generations of Hokkiens.

===

Sorry, I don't mean to "bore" everyone with the details of my family! I only post this - along with my analysis - because I think it sheds light in a very interesting way on the usage of 2- and 3-character names in the history of Hokkien-speakers in S.E. Asia.

Niuc:

It's kinda odd to have different types of given name (1 char vs 2 char) among sisters.

Among the descendents of Hong Gim: Hong Tiu (􀹍􁜞) had two siblings Hong Han Leong (􀹍􀝱􀨊) and Hong Guang Kim (􀹍􀝪􀛚) but in this case, she was a girl, and the two siblings were boys. However, of the descendents of Hong Yen, there were three sisters Fang Nee (􀹍􄑍), Fang Hwan (􀹍􀟐), and Hong See Eng (􀹍􀵈􁂇), so this was also not totally unknown in my family.

Of course, it could also be that they started out with 2-character names, but one of them might be listed with a 3-character name because the last 2 characters are a "literary name" which she took for herself in school. I doubt very much if this was what happened in the case of Hong See Eng (􀹍􀵈􁂇), as I believe she wasn't literate. But, that could be an explanation in other cases.