Posted by al on December 04, 2002 at 05:28:22:
In Reply to: Re: TAM posted by Al Chinn on April 14, 2002 at 13:21:10:
: Just go to www.chineseroots.com and do a surname search. In Mandarin it is Tan.
yes yes icic, my surname is TAM too and i have found things abt that...tam has some great ppl in this century. one of them was tam chi tong who was a reformer in the Qing dynasty. However, he failed during the uprising, was caught and put to death
Tam comes from a norther region earlier but is now settled in the south.
They now settle in guangdong province and some are still up in the norther regions around shandong.
I am not sure what it means but ppl with surname TAM are hard working =)).
ur granparents come from toisan
so i suspect TOI is written as the first chin character of TAIwan and SAN as 'hill'.
toidsan is still a pretty poor place in china as i have once visited a few years ago, the development clearly lags behind siu-gwan or zhong san.
If u hav a chane to return to guangdong province u might be able to buy some books on chinese surnames.