what is mandarin / hokien pronuciaton of (王+霄) and (王+堂)

[elmer]

Hello,
Again I have come upon two characters that I can't find anywhere in the dictionaries.
The first is 王+霄
The second is 王+堂

Anybody (Mark?) knows how these where pronounced ad if there is an alternative way of writing these days?

thanks,
Elmer

[Mark Yong]

Hi, elmer,

I only managed to find the 2nd character: 𤨠

Unfortunately, I could not locate the other character. Are you sure you got it correctly written?

If the phonetic elements of the characters are anything to go by, then it probably works out as Siau1 Tong5.

[aokh1979]

Neither can I locate the 1st character. From where did you see it ? The 2nd one is also a rare character. You're naming your child ?

[elmer]

Thanks!

An no, I am not naming my child I am making a transciption of the Li-genealogy of Shanbiancun (Longhai, Zhangzhou, Fujian) of which I am a descendant. Unfortunately I don't yet know which exactly is my branch.

For the two characters I asked about, see http://s5.postimage.org/6gg1qrzvr/img613.jpg. One of them has been answered, but the other I can't find anywhere. I have looked at it again, but I still feel it is 王+霄 (tunnelvision?)

thanks and regards,
Elmer

[elmer]

Sorry, I changed the picture to: http://s5.postimage.org/ftl9w65if/img614.jpg, as I realised there is a third character in this text of which I am not certain. Can youhelp me out with this one as well?

As you will realize I am analphabetic in Chinese and it is only with http://www.nciku.com/ and http://www.chinese-tools.com that I can find the matching digital characters. It is quite a bit of work this way, but I am learning.

One other question. I just heard that at a friend found very interesting material on http://www.ztzupu.com/Genealogy/Details/650 and http://www.ztzupu.com/UploadFiles/Genea ... index.html. The ZT in ztzupu.com means Zhangzhou and Taiwan. Could anybody check for me if there are also zupu's uploaded about families Li?

thanks again,
Elmer

[Mark Yong]

Hi, elmer,

No, I think you got it right, the character was indeed written as 王+霄. Even the Taiwanese MOE’s 異體字 (variant characters) dictionary, probably the most comprehensive online character reference available at over 100,000 characters, did not list either of those characters.

My theory is this: All the three persons in that generation were females, and the father (秉瑄), who happens to have the jade 玉 radical in his name 瑄, wanted to have that same radical present in his daughters’ names. But for whatever reason, he wanted the characters 堂 and 霄 in two of the girls’ names (might have been historical, circumstancial, auspicious), so he just added the 玉 radical to the side of them, and assumed that the pronunciations would remain intact. As migrant Chinese of that era, I find it highly unlikely that they would have had the vast resource available to seek out rare, yet orthodox characters.

That’s about the best answer I can give.

[elmer]

Thanks, I really love the internet, which enables me to find support on the other side of the world. Why do you assume they were girls? And do you have an ida what the third character may be, which I puta red circle around?

regards,
Elmer

[Mark Yong]

elmer wrote:
Why do you assume they were girls?

The 玉 jade radical in the characters of the names. It’s generally used for girls.

elmer wrote:
And do you have an ida what the third character may be, which I puta red circle around?

添 thiam1˧. There is a stroke missing (or illegible from the text) down the bottom-right.

[elmer]

Ah, I understand. 玉 = Giok in the Dutch East Indies, indeed used several times in my family for women. But I also have examples where it was used for men. I asked the question because I thought these Chinese genealogies generally only consisted of the male offspring.

Thanks again!