Translation

[SimL]

Hmmm... sorry. The Chinese characters for the names in the last part of my reply were cut and pasted from the pdf-files of the trees, and seem to be in a different encoding, and hence undisplayable.

[SimL]

Hi Jackdaw,

Perhaps it might be an idea to scan the back of that photograph, place the scan somewhere on the net, and post a link to it here, so that the other Forum members can look at the other characters to see if they might be your grandma's name. I and two other people have done this with photographs of our grandparents and great-grandparents graves, and other members have been very helpful in deciphering them in the past.

SimL.

[jackdaw]

From my one simple post it has turned into a very interesting bits on 2-3 character name format. I did not mentioned this in my earlier post. In fact my grandfather's name is also of two character format (i.e. 黃 油) which I could easily relates to the Malaysian/Singaporean spelling of 'Ng Yew'. Both my grandparents were probably born no later than 1910's. This matches SimL's deduction that 2-character names were known for people born before 1900 up to early 1950's. Last night, I managed to get confirmation from a relative of mine from Singapore who confirmed that 趙 縣 is indeed my grandma's name. The 'Kio' might have been a misspelt 'Kion' or something. The familiar problem when names get romanised back in those days. All is well and good. Hence, many thanks to all of you who have spent precious time to assist me in my search.

[SimL]

Hi Jackdaw,

Yes indeed, it turned into a very interesting discussion on the historical development of the Chinese naming system as practiced by Hokkiens.

I'm very happy to hear that you now know with confidence your grandma's name. Thanks for your contribution and all the best with the urns.

SimL