>> my father's name is also similar to your maternal grandfather.
>> His surname is in mandarin, but his name is in dialect.
Hi! Nice to know more details about this.
My mother has her official name (on her birth certificate) completely in Mandarin, but I've never heard anyone actually use it in real life. So in effect, I've only ever heard her Mandarin name pronounced in English - like when spelling it out on the phone when ringing the doctor, electricity company etc
. I think her eldest brother has a mixed Mandarin-Hokkien name, but I'll have to ask her the next time I speak to her.On my father's side we are Baba and cannot speak Mandarin (even worse, we are Penang Baba and so generally cannot speak even other dialects, unlike the Chinese on peninsular Malaysia). As a consequence of this, none of us have "literary names", and all our official names are in dialect only.
When Aurelio first posted his thread on "Surnames in Hokkien" I started gathering examples of Hokkien names on the net, in order to see if we could get as complete a list of surnames as possible. However, I gave up after some time because Niuc posted his excellent reply with a complete list of surnames. Now that the topic of interest has shifted slightly to Hokkien personal names, I may go back and try and get more examples and post them here.
Andrew:
>> Is the literary name usually used with the surname, or by itself?
The usage is no different from that of "household name" (to use Yisheng's very appropriate coinage). i.e. the literary name appears to be a "personal" name selected by the individual, and can hence be used in combination with the surname. So, the "full name" becomes "<surname> + <literaryname> for application forms, entries in the phone book, etc, while school friends, teachers, colleagues and adult friends address the person just as <literaryname>.
-Sim.
