How do I pronounce my name in Hokkien?

[kero]

Hi,

I am embarassed but I do not know how to pronounce my name or write it in roman letters because I am a third generation Chinese and my family originated from Amoy. My father gave me this name, but I only know the Mandarin for it.

張天門

Zhang Tian Men

I know my family name is Tiu/Zhang. My first name I do not know how to spell in roman letters. My name has the characters of Heaven and Gate.

Hope you can help me.

Thank you.

[duaaagiii]

張天門
romanization: Tiunn1 Thian1-bun5
sounds somewhat like: deew tien/ten boon
tones: mid-mid-rising

[jilang]

Hi Kero and Duaaagiii.

I would have thought it would be like this:

romanized: tiunn thinn mng
pronounced like: diu tee meng - (nasal on 'diu' and 'tee')

[duaaagiii]

Jilang,

The most common convention is to read a name as

surname (often colloquial) + given name (usually literary)

unless indicated otherwise, or unless it is obvious that it should be read otherwise. That is why I guessed "Tiunn1 (colloquial) Thian1-bun5 (literary)". "Thinn1-mng5 (or muinn5 for some dialects)" is the colloquial reading of 天門.

[jilang]

Thanks. Well that's interesting. Before you explained I had no idea there was such a way of pronouncing names.

[SimL]

Hi all,

In doing my family history research, I came across a document written in (traditional) Chinese. I have two questions concerning the names of some of my relatives mentioned in it.

1. The name of one of my great-granduncles is: 李俊卿. The surname is of course Lee (POJ/TLPA: li2), but how would the other two characters be pronounced in Hokkien? The Chinese etymology site http://www.internationalscientific.org/ gives "chun3 kheng1". Is this correct?

2. My great-grandfather's name is: 陳芳霖 - Tan Hong Lim, but in the document, an extra character 府 appears after the surname, giving 陳府芳霖. Is this meant to be interpreted as "honorable"?

Thanks in advance.

Sim.

[duaaagiii]

1. The name of one of my great-granduncles is: 李俊卿. The surname is of course Lee (POJ/TLPA: li2), but how would the other two characters be pronounced in Hokkien? The Chinese etymology site http://www.internationalscientific.org/ gives "chun3 kheng1". Is this correct?

Yes, that's correct (in POJ).

2. My great-grandfather's name is: 陳芳霖 - Tan Hong Lim, but in the document, an extra character 府 appears after the surname, giving 陳府芳霖. Is this meant to be interpreted as "honorable"?

陳府 is a formal way of saying "the 陳 family".

[SimL]

Hi duaaagiii,

Thanks a lot. In the coming months I'll be posting more questions, in connection with my project. I hope you (and the other regulars) will find it interesting (rather than tedious) to answer them!

Cheers,
Sim.