Posted by Jinchuan Wang (67.69.174.211) on April 22, 2004 at 15:04:20:
In Reply to: Last Name Origin "HUNG" posted by Roman on April 29, 2001 at 06:06:08:
: Hi, Rowan:
It is very hard to find out the orginal meaning of your grandfather's last name.
First, Chinese people put their family names in the beginning of their names. Are you sure your grandfather's family name was Hung? Maybe he had adapted the western tradition when he arrived at Somoa, putting his family name at the end as Lok. If this was the case, Lok is a very popular Chinese last name, which has no special meaning as name, but means "collect" if used otherwise. It was a last name with long history. You need a book to understand its origin and development. It has only modern meanings when combined with other Chinese words.
Even if your grandfather's last name was Hung, you still have another problem, Chinese language is not a letter (spelling) language, it is a symbol language in writing. Many words have the same pronunciations and can only be distiguished by their writings and context information used in a gialogue. When you grandfather moved to Somoa, he translated his last name into Hung according to the pronunciation, which may be the same as many other words.
Another problem is the dialect. You mentioned your grandfather was from Canton, which is a southern coastal province. Its dialect is different from dialects in other provinces significantly. Even I as a Chinese can not understand it. At that time, there was not formal official language in China. So Hung could mean a totally different word than one I can think of in modern Chinese language.
If you can email me your grandfather's name in Chinese in writing, I can figure our more information. For thousand yeas, the writing has not changed a lot.
Hope this is helpful.
Good luck.
: I'm Roman and i'm from Samoa in the South Pacific. My great grandfather was a China-man who travelled to the pacific during the early 1900s. He came to Samoa under a contract with Germany to work as a plantation overseer in Samoa. He was then married to a Samoan who is known to be my great grandmother. He passed away during the late 1950s, thats when i wasnt born.
: Anyways my grandfather then told me about his father, he said that he was from Canton, and he had 7 brothers and were all dead when he left China, this is when he was living with his mother's of father's family (not too sure), and they were quite harsh in treating him so he heard of Samoa & the Germans with good income in plantation work.
: So he left his homeland at a young age to be in the pacific to find fortune & a good life.
: His full name was "HUNG LI LOK", so i'm trying to trace any ancestors of his in China. I am very interested & eager to find out because "FAMILIES ARE FOREVER".
: Thank you,
: ROMAN