Hi Joey
The official term for Cantonese is
Yue Yu (粤语) also commonly known as "Guangong Hua" (广东话).
The Chinese has a long history and in the early ancient days, surnames are often adopted in the country/county/place that they reside. Examples include
Wu (吳),
Zhao (赵),
Lu (鲁), etc. Some surnames originated from their professions, occupations or official titles, such as
Tu (屠butcher) ,
Mu (牧shepherd),
Sima (司马official title),
Situ (司徒official title), etc.
Sometime, the Chinese changed their surname when they moved to a different part of the country and sometime the change is due to an official imperial conferment from the emperor. One such example is the famous navigator,
Zheng He (郑和) whose original name was
Ma Sanbao (马三保). He were given the surname of
Zheng by the Ming Emperor,
Yongle (明成祖永乐).
By the way, Ma is a very common surname for Moslem in northern China,
Zheng He is also a Moslem and so is
Ma Shaoxuan some of which originated from some minority ethnicitiy. Interestingly, my surname in Chinese is the same as
Ma Shaoxuan (马) but my forefathers are from the southern part of China. In Chinese, there is saying that if you have the same surname, you are probably a family 500 years ago!
Some of you may be interested to know why the English translation of the surname
Ma is different like in my case, it is translated as
Baey. This is due to the different pronounciations of the word in different dialects. In my case, the
Ma is translated to
Baey as my dialect is
Teochew (Chao Zhou).During those days, there was no
Hanyu Pinyin and the translation was up to the officer who register our names in our birth certificates. Therefore, it is quite common that members from the same family ended up having different English surnames. Take a typical example, the surname
Wang (王) (as in
Wang Xisan): it is
Wang in Mandaring,
Wong in Cantonese,
Heng in Teochew and
Ong in Hokkien (Fujian) dialect. So, do not be alarmed if Mr Wang introduces his father as Mr Ong and his brother as Mr Heng!
Have a great weekend!
Regards.
Richard
Whoops! Me bad!
YF's surname is Yang (Ram). I forgot that there are 5 intonations in Beijinghua and 9 in Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect? how do you say 'Cantonese' in Pinyin?).
Is there a way to connect a surname to an ethnicity in China? The way names like Grinberg, Silver, Friedman, Cohen, Levy etc., can be connected to Eastern European Jews, and names ending in 'shvili' or 'nadze' are Caucasian Georgian?
Sorry for mixing up you and Inn Bok re. the Ivory bottle. It really is stunning...
Shabbat Shalom,
Joey