Tuesday 29 November 2016

1843 HKSAR Name of the Day

Hydie Chan, primary school teacher, Hong Kong


English name: Hydie Chan
Chinese name: 陳晞
Age: 31
Profession/Education: Primary school teacher
What’s the story behind your English name?: Hydie is originally a French boy’s name. It is pronounced as ‘hei di’, very similar to my Chinese name. My parents felt it was special so they chose it for name. I use it on my Hong Kong ID card.


About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Creation; Phonetic-based

Sunday 27 November 2016

1842 HKSAR Name of the Day

Josephia Feng Jing, 26, banker at Deutsche Bank, Hong Kong

A recent Hongkonger from mainland China.

Name: Josephia Feng Jing
Chinese name: 冯静
Age: 26
Profession: banker at Deutsche Bank
What’s the story behind your English name?: I got my name Josephia from my first English teacher – a 70-year-old from Mississippi, America. He thought it should start with the same letter as my given Chinese name, which is Jing, so he thought of Josephia. I was growing up in Wuxi, eastern China, aged about seven or eight when he gave me my name.


About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Creation

Friday 25 November 2016

What's in a Hongkonger's Name?

This is a nice little article by Rachel Blundy looking at why Hong Kong people have novel or weird names. This blog has previously ventured some reasons why there appears to be more novel names used in Hong Kong than in any other place in the world where English names are adopted.

We hear from Money, Curtis, Hydie and Josephia, who tell us how they got their strange names (although "Curtis" is not a weird name!). Also glad to see this journalist authenticates many of these names and qualifies them as real people (just like this blog does by only accepting names that come from credible sources). Well done Blundy!


About Novel HKSAR Names


see also:

Hong Kong Loves Weird English Names




Reference: SCMP article

iPhone, Cola and Kinky: what’s in a Hong Kongers name?

Trend for Hongkongers choosing unusual English names continues as they compete to find most original one
PUBLISHED : Monday, 07 March, 2016, 10:56pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 08 March, 2016, 3:10pm
Soufflé, Arial, Focus, Hippo and Kinky. They might sound like the members of an avant-garde electro-pop band, but in fact they are just some of the more unusual names that Hongkongers are going by in 2016.
So why are quirky names so popular in Hong Kong and how do we explain their evolution? Post-colonial British influences mean most Hongkongers have an English name that they commonly use at work or amongst friends, while at home they will often answer to their Chinese name or nickname.
The tradition seems to vary according to a person’s class. Upper-class and Western-educated parents typically give their children English names at birth or soon after. Some Chinese parents pay feng shui masters up to HK$25,000 to come up with an original name for their child based on factors such as the time of their birth and characteristics they want their kids to have later in life. Feng shui dates as far back as 4000 BC in China. It remained popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1960s while being pushed out of China during the Cultural Revolution. It has since regained popularity in Hong Kong. It is sometimes used to choose a new name for a child later in life if a family believes they are suffering from cosmic problems, i.e. bad luck.
Louis Wong, a third generation feng shui practitioner at Sky Fortune in Causeway Bay, says he provides parents with up to 30 names to choose from for their child. He compiles the shortlist by trying to create what he describes as “balanced” names using the five Chinese Taoist elements (fire, earth, metal, water and wood); the number of strokes in a child’s written Chinese name and the pronunciation of each Chinese character. “Most of our customers are quite satisfied with these 30 names because they have a lot to choose from. I also show them the name selection method.

Sometimes parents have quite different ideas on what to use – such as including the concept of the sky – but we tell them it is not a stable name choice in Chinese culture. We give them our advice and if they insist on using their own name then that is their decision,” he says.

“People in Hong Kong are trying to assert their individuality. It is a bit like when you choose clothes - you are making a statement of sorts.” Joseph Bosco, associate professor of cultural anthropology at the Chinese University

In contrast, working-class children may be given a name later out of necessity at school. They might choose their own name or be given one by their teacher. This might be one reason why some children have ended up with rather arbitrary names, such as Rainbow.
But there’s no hard and fast rule for how Hongkongers acquire their English name, as SCMP journalist and Hongkonger Laura Ma explains: “I was named after Laura Ingalls Wilder, the American author who wrote ‘Little House on the Prairie’, because I liked it as a child, but I wasn’t given that name until I was eight years old - about six months after I moved to Canada. I’d already been registered as Yan-yi at school, so I continued using this name while I lived in Canada. It wasn’t until I moved back to Hong Kong almost four years ago that by chance ‘Laura’ became my name after I included it as my middle name on my Hong Kong University journalism masters registration.”

Meanwhile, at home, some Hongkongers might go by a name which denotes their position in a family. “In a Chinese household, my parents never used my English or Chinese name anyway since we refer to each other by our relation,” Ma says. “Being the eldest, my parents just called me ‘big sister’ (in Chinese) and only used my full Chinese name when I was in trouble.”
For some, a less conventional name is undoubtedly a way of marking themselves out from the crowd. Young Hongkongers in particular seem to be embracing the freedom to take on a new persona through their adopted English name.
Joseph Bosco at Chinese University thinks these names demonstrate Hongkongers expressing their uniqueness, rather than them making a post-colonial political statement.
“It is a bit like when you choose clothes,” he says. “You are making a statement of sorts – but it is not a political one, at least not a conscious one. People in Hong Kong are trying to assert their individuality. A lot of Chinese people want to make their name sound different – a lot of them have similar surnames too so it becomes more necessary to have a different first name. And many Chinese students do not feel there is a problem with changing certain letters in a name.”

But unlike in the US and UK, where weird and wonderful names are given to children by their often pretentious parents, Hong Kong names are being concocted by the children themselves.
“My students sometimes ask me why I have such a boring name,” says John Carroll, professor of Hong Kong history at Hong Kong University. “I think people want names that are unusual. People want to differentiate themselves. They can be creative with their names – but they’re not often on their Hong Kong ID cards, which can be confusing when they enroll here.”

Some Hongkongers even decide to change their adopted English names later in life, just because they feel like it. Professor Carroll says: “When I arrived here in the 1960s, I noticed people had unusual names and I had friends who would just change them – I knew a Dickie who changed his name to Norbert and a Stephen who substituted the ‘S’ in his name with a ‘Z’.”

This somewhat playful approach to the naming process extends to using English nouns which would never traditionally be adopted as names in Western cultures. “Cola”, “Fish” and “Orange” are just some recent examples of this in Hong Kong’s schools. The trend suggests children are simply choosing objects they identify with or words they like the sound of when selecting their name. But again, unlike when Western parents deliberately select alternative names in order to be perceived as “edgy” (Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow’s decision to call their daughter “Apple” springs to mind), young Hongkongers on the whole seem to choose these names in an unassuming way.
Whilst this desire for uniqueness might not be a new phenomenon, there are certainly some names, such as iPhone, which have only come into usage since the turn of the 21st century.
Bosco further attributes this to Hongkongers striving for individuality.
“This shows the cultural meanings of names can be very different in different cultural contexts. In a sense people here are following Chinese rule, but they want an English name which marks them out as unique,” he says.

Four Hongkongers tell us how they got their names

English name: Money Chin
Chinese name: 錢梓峰
Age: 23
Profession/university: Insurance agent
What’s the story behind your English name?: I chose my name because my surname in Chinese means ‘money’ – so together it translates as ‘Money Money’. I think by using an unusual English name, it’s more likely we’ll be remembered by people when we first meet them. It makes us unique and special - which is how most Hongkongers want to be thought of in their daily life.

English name: Curtis Li
Chinese name: 李政澔
Age: 20
Profession/Education: Student at New York University
What’s the story behind your English name?: Curtis comes from the word ‘courteous’. It is also a soft rhyme with my dad’s name, Ernest.


English name: Hydie Chan
Chinese name: 陳晞
Age: 31
Profession/Education: Primary school teacher
What’s the story behind your English name?: Hydie is originally a French boy’s name. It is pronounced as ‘hei di’, very similar to my Chinese name. My parents felt it was special so they chose it for name. I use it on my Hong Kong ID card.



Name: Josephia Feng Jing
Chinese name: 冯静
Age: 26
Profession: banker at Deutsche Bank
What’s the story behind your English name?: I got my name Josephia from my first English teacher – a 70-year-old from Mississippi, America. He thought it should start with the same letter as my given Chinese name, which is Jing, so he thought of Josephia. I was growing up in Wuxi, eastern China, aged about seven or eight when he gave me my name.



Sunday 20 November 2016

Origins of Chinese Family Names

Although not novel and about family names (surnames, from an English perspective), this is nevertheless an interesting article about the origins of some common Chinese names.

The family names in this article are:



Putonghua: Chen
Cantonese: Chan



Putonghua: Zhou
Cantonese: Chau



Putonghua: Zhao
Cantonese: Chiu



Putonghua: Zhang
Cantonese: Cheung



Putonghua: Liu
Cantonese: Lau



Putonghua: Li
Cantonese: Li, Lee



Putonghua: Wu
Cantonese: Ng



Putonghua: Huang
Cantonese: Wong


Putonghua: Wang
Cantonese: Wong


Putonghua: Yang
Cantonese: Yeung



Reference: Post Magazine (SCMP)

The complex origins of Chinese names demystified

With more than 4,700 Chinese family names in use today, find out how the Chan in Jackie Chan dates back to 1046BC and why Bruce Lee owes his name to a plum tree

By Wee Kek Koon
“What is your name?” ought to be a straight­forward question but, for many Chinese, it is often accom­panied by self-conscious explanations, repeated corrections and, finally, resigned capitulation (“Just call me John!”). Even in Hong Kong, where Han Chinese form the over­whelming majority, many non-Chinese residents find Chinese names “difficult” – although, in fairness, the fault is not entirely theirs.
The modern naming convention is actually quite simple: the family name is placed in front of the given name. For example, the name of the chief executive of Hong Kong, “Leung Chun-ying”, written as “梁振英” in Chinese, is standard, with the family name “Leung” () placed in front of the given name, “Chun-ying” (振英).
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

All would be well if all romanised Chinese names followed this format, but that is not the case. Romanised family names are placed in all manner of positions. They may be rendered in the form of a Western “last name” because the person has taken on or been given a non-Chinese, usually Western, name in addition to his Chinese one, e.g. Peter Wong; or he may choose to go by his initials, which usually involves placing his surname last, e.g. C.Y. Leung. In the case of the hybridised Western-Chinese name John Tsang Chun-wah, the surname is the second word (“Tsang”).
Vicki Zhao, actress and singer.

It becomes even more confusing in the case of married women taking on their husband’s family name in addition to their own, e.g. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, where “Lam” is her husband’s surname and “Cheng” is her maiden name. The practice of capitalising all the letters of the surname, e.g. John TSANG Chun-wah, has not really caught on outside legal and government circles, perhaps because it looks ugly in print.
While one’s family name can be placed in front, at the back or somewhere in between in romanised form, in Chinese it always precedes the given name. Hence, while the chief executive can either be “Leung Chun-ying” or “C.Y. Leung” in English-language press reports, in Chinese he will always be “梁振英”, never “振英梁”.
As in most patrilineal societies, the Chinese family name is passed down from father to child. A son will pass the same name to his children but a daughter will not: her children will take her husband’s family name.
 
The late Momofuku Ando, born Wu Baifu, Taiwanese-Japanese inventor of instant noodles.

The very first Chinese family names, however, might have originated in a matrilineal society. Many of these earliest clan names, known as xing, contain the ideograph for “woman” (), such as Ji (), Ying (), Yao (), Jiang ( ) and so on, which are probably representative of an era between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, when people knew who their mother was but would have been less sure of their father’s identity. The word xing () is made up of two ideographs that read “born of a woman”, and a person’s xing name placed them within a kinship group that forbade marriage between its members.
The appearance of another kinship indicator, the shi (), was first recorded in the Zhou dynasty (1046–256BC), by which time Chinese society had become firmly patrilineal and social organisation much more complex. The shi name was essentially a subset of the xing name, and individuals might have taken one because they desired greater differentiation among themselves.
For example, imagine a noble family with Ji as their xing name and who had been conferred a few castles and the surrounding lands by their king. Their domain was, say, the state of Zheng. In time, the descendants of this noble family would have taken on the name “Zheng” as their shi name to differentiate themselves from other Ji families, elsewhere. So, a member from this family with the given name, say, Boya, would have been identified thus: “Boya, with the xing Ji and the shi Zheng”, followed by a string of aliases such as style names, courtesy names and the like.
Actress Michelle Yeoh.

Over generations, the descendants of this Boya might have dropped or even forgotten their xing name (Ji) and begun using their shi name (Zheng) exclusively. Some descendants might also have changed their shi names to reflect new circumstances, such as migration or acquisition of a prominent title by one of their own.
And then there were commoners without xing names but who took on shi names that identified where they lived, what they did for a living and so on. It was all very confusing!
Fortunately, when the first emperor of the Qin dynasty unified China into a centralised empire in 221BC, his administration standardised many aspects of everyday life, including names. The xing and shi names, which by then had become interchangeable in practical terms, were formally merged into the single concept of the family name.
Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

By the Western and Eastern Han dynasties (206BC-AD220), which followed the Qin, the naming convention had become stable, with almost every individual sporting a well-established family name followed by a given name, a style that remains the norm. Nevertheless, throughout the imperial period, many people, especially members of the elite, took on or were referred to by aliases in addition to their name, but this practice was dropped in the early 20th century.
Today, there are more than 4,700 Chinese family names in use – not including variants – and, according to a 2007 census by the Ministry of Public Security, the most common in the mainland is Wang (), of whom there are a whopping 93 million. The next most common family names are: Li (), Zhang (), Liu (), Chen (), Yang (), Huang (), Zhao (), Zhou () and Wu (). Even if the Chinese family names in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and the rest of the world are included, the top 10 surnames remain unchanged. About 40 per cent of the world’s Chinese answer to one of these names.
The late Zhou Enlai, premier of China

FAMILY NAMES, AND the kinship ties they embody, have a special place in the Chinese psyche. In many immigrant Chinese communities there exist mutual-help associations whose main membership criterion is the possession of a speci­fic family name, regardless of where one’s home province or village was in China. Although less so these days, people with the same family name articulate a connection with each other by saying their ancestors belonged to “the same family 500 years ago”. Indeed, centuries of meti­culous record-keeping has enabled people to trace their forebears back many generations, and the study of these genealogies and other historical texts by scholars has given us the origins and histories of most Chinese family names.
The late Lee Kuan Yew, first prime minister of Singapore
The origins can be classified under several categories, the biggest of which is geographical location. Family names in this category came about when a group of people adopted the name of their place of settlement as their kinship indi­cator. The next two categories involve eminent forefathers: these names were either extracted from ancestors’ names and posthumous titles, or indicate their rank and official position. There are also family names that denote the occupations of craftsmen and artisans. In some cases, rulers conferred their own, royal surnames on their subjects and non-Han peoples as a favour or reward.
The above categories encompass the majority of Chinese family names, but they are by no means exhaustive or mutually exclusive. Given the sheer size and population of the Chinese nation over several millennia, the same family name might have originated with different people at different places and times, as demonstrated in the stories that follow.
Taiwanese-American singer Wang Leehom.

The brief accounts are abridged versions of the complex origins of the most common names, and many of the stories are just that. Written in historical texts but not independently verifiable, some of the alleged ancestors might not have even existed. Read them as one would legends or conjectures.
The default romanisation for the names follows the Hanyu Pinyin system, and the most common Cantonese romanised forms found in Hong Kong are also given. Note that ethnic Chinese outside the Greater China region, such as those in Singapore, Malaysia and North America, have their own romanised names. For example, Huang () can be Wong, Ng, Ung, Wee, Ooi, Oei, Hwang, Hoang and so on.


Putonghua: Wang
Cantonese: Wong, not to be confused with the other Wong ()
Wong Kar-wai.
Origins: Wang means “king” and royal connections are very much in evidence in the stories of the surname’s origins. Prince Jin, the oldest son of King Ling of the Zhou dynasty (died 545BC), was demoted to a commoner for being critical when advising his father. Given their royal antecedents, the former prince’s descendants were referred to as “the king’s family” (wang jia) and “Wang” became their shi name. Other descendants of the royal family of the 800-year-long Zhou dynasty took on the kingly Wang as their family names at various times. Also, due to intermarriage, or the desire to assimilate or form alliances with the Chinese empire, non-Han peoples, such as the Xiongnu, Koreans, Khitans, Mongols and Manchus, gave themselves the surname Wang at various times in history.
Famous Wangs: Wang Yi (王毅), foreign minister of China; Wong Kar-wai (王家衛), film director; Wang Leehom (王力宏), Taiwanese-American singer.


Putonghua: Li
Cantonese: Li, Lee
Bruce Lee.
Origins: during the reign of the legendary King Yao, the minister of justice (da li, “大理”) was an individual called Gao Yao. His descendants inherited the position and took Li () as their shi name. During the late Shang dynasty, one of Gao’s descendants, Li Zheng, angered the king, who had him executed. During their flight from the capital, Li’s wife and their infant son ate the fruit of a plum tree when they had run out of food. When they were finally safe from danger, Li’s wife changed her son’s name from “” to the identical sounding “” (“plum”) in gratitude for the life-giving sustenance of the plum tree, but, more importantly, to hide him from the king’s wrath. This was how the family name Li came into being. One of the reasons Li became such a common name was because, during the Tang dynasty (618-907), emperors had the propensity to confer the imperial surname Li on many of their subjects as reward for services rendered to the throne. This largesse extended to foreigners such as Arabs, Persians, Jews and Koreans who settled in China.
Famous Lis: the late Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), first prime minister of Singapore; Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠), property magnate; the late Bruce Lee (李小龍), international film star.


Putonghua: Zhang
Cantonese: Cheung
Zhang Dejiang.
Origins: this name can be traced all the way back to the Yellow Emperor, the mythical founder of the Chinese nation. Inspired by his observations of the stars in the night sky, Hui, a grandson of the Yellow Emperor, invented the bow, which greatly facilitated hunting. His grandfather put him in charge of manufacturing bows and arrows, and gave him the title bow master (gong zhang, 弓長). Hui’s descendants combined the two characters of the title to form their shi name, Zhang (). Another major branch of the Zhang family name originated much later, during the Zhou dynasty. The descendants of Xie Zhang (解張), a senior official in the state of Jin, took the second character of their ancestor’s name and made it their family name.
Famous Zhangs: Zhang Dejiang (張德江), chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and top official responsible for Hong Kong and Macau affairs; Zhang Yimou (張藝謀), film director; the late Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing (張國榮), Canto-pop star.
Canto-pop idol Leslie Cheung.



Putonghua: Liu
Cantonese: Lau
Lau Luen-hung.
Origins: here be dragons. During the latter years of the Xia dynasty (circa 2070BC-1600BC), Liulei (劉累), a descendant of the legendary King Yao, was the official in charge of the king’s dragons. When one of them died under his care, Liulei fled with his family and settled in present-day Henan. His descendants adopted the shi name Liu, from the first character of Liulei’s name. It remains uncertain if these “dragons” were Yangtze alligators, giant lizards or snakes. Another story regarding the family name is more prosaic. In 592BC, King Ding of the Zhou dynasty conferred the state of Liu on his younger brother, and its residents took Liu as their family name. Much later, during the Western and Eastern Han dynasties (206BC-AD220), the Chinese empire kept peace with the nomadic peoples at its northern and western borders with alliances secured by marriage. Chinese princesses were given in marriage to the rulers of the nomads, many of whom adopted the surname Liu, the family name of their royal in-laws. Many Lius today are the descendants of these intermarriages.
Famous Lius: The late Liu Shaoqi (劉少奇), one of the top political leaders of China in the 1950s and 60s; Andy Lau Tak-wah (劉德華), Canto-pop singer and actor; Joseph Lau Luen-hung (劉鑾雄), fugitive tycoon.
Liu Shaoqi.



Putonghua: Chen
Cantonese: Chan
Chen Shui-bian.
Origins: when the Western Zhou dynasty was established, in 1046BC, the founding King Wu managed to locate a descendant of the legendary Emperor Shun, who had ruled the Chinese nation some 1,000 years before. This individual, named Man, who might or might not have been the descendant of a king who might or might not have actually existed, was made the ruler of the state of Chen, which covered present-day eastern Henan and parts of Anhui. To cement the legitimacy of his new dynasty, King Wu married his oldest daughter to Man, who was tasked with making regular offerings to his virtuous ancestor, King Shun. Man became Chen Man after adopting the name of his state as his shi name. After his death, Chen Man was conferred the title Duke Hu (胡公). Chen Man is acknowledged as the progenitor of not one but two family names: Chen (), after the name of his state, and Hu (), from his posthumous title.
Famous Chens: Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), former president of Taiwan; Joseph Zen Ze-kiun (陳日君), cardinal and bishop emeritus of Hong Kong; Jackie Chan (陳港生, known professionally in Chinese as 成龍), Academy Award-winning actor.
Zen Ze-kiun.



Putonghua: Yang
Cantonese: Yeung
Chen-Ning Franklin Yang.
Origins: King Kang, the third king of the Western Zhou dynasty, who reigned from 1020BC to 996BC, made a cousin, Zhu, the marquess of a small region called Yang, located in present-day southwestern Shanxi. In 514BC, the state of Yang, which had changed hands a couple of times, was conquered by the powerful state of Jin. The descendants of its rulers and its residents adopted the name of their vanquished state as their shi name.
Famous Yangs: Chen-Ning Franklin Yang (楊振寧), co-winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics; Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng (楊紫瓊), Malaysia-born international film star; Jerry Yang (楊致遠), Taiwanese-American co-founder of Yahoo!
Jerry Yang.



Putonghua: Huang
Cantonese: Wong, not to be confused with the other Wong ()
Anna May Wong.
Origins:the name can be traced back to the state of Huang, which was founded during the Shang dynasty. The tiny state, located in present-day Henan, acknowledged the legitimacy of the Western Zhou dynasty when the latter replaced the Shang dynasty in 1046BC. As a reward, the Zhou king conferred the ruler of Huang with the minor rank of viscount. Huang was one of the two tiny states that fought against the rise of their giant neighbour, the state of Chu. Its resistance came to nought when it was unceremoniously annexed by Chu in 648BC. In remembrance of their former home, Huang’s residents took its name as their shi name.
Famous Huangs: the late Anna May Wong Liu Tsong ( 黃柳 ), the first Chinese-American Hollywood movie star; the late Ng Teng Fong (黃廷芳), Singapore and Hong Kong property magnate; Joshua Wong Chi-fung (黃之峰), secretary general of Hong Kong political party Demosisto.
Joshua Wong.



Putonghua: Zhao
Cantonese: Chiu
Zhao Ziyang.
Origins: the progenitor of the Zhaos was an individual called Zaofu, who was famed for his skills in training horses and steering chariots. He was the personal charioteer of King Mu, of the Western Zhou dynasty, who reigned from 976BC to 922BC, and often accompanied the merry monarch on his hunting expeditions and travels. It is said that once, they went so far west they reached the Kunlun Mountains, where they met the Queen Mother of the West, whom historians have posited was a female ruler of a tribe or state rather than the Taoist deity of the same name. For his services to the king, Zaofu was given the domain Zhaocheng (趙城), after which he adopted Zhao as his shi name. Zaofu’s seventh-generation descendant went into the service of the state of Jin and, in time, the Zhao family divided Jin with two other families and founded the state of Zhao, whose territory occupied parts of present-day Hebei, Shanxi and Shaanxi.
Famous Zhaos: the late Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽), former premier of China; Cecil Chao Sze-tsung (趙世曾), business magnate; Vicki Zhao Wei (趙薇), actress and singer.
Cecil Chao.



Putonghua: Zhou
Cantonese: Chau
Jay Chou.
Origins: although the Zhou dynasty lasted almost 800 years, its rulers were kings in name only for most of the dynasty’s existence. The royal domain was surrounded by powerful states, which were nominally subordinate to the king, and by the time the state of Qin put the dynasty out of its misery, in 256BC, the hapless Zhou king was the lord of only a tiny parcel of land in central China. As with many family names, members of the former Zhou royalty and the citizens of Zhou took the place name as their shi name.
Famous Zhous: the late Zhou Shuren (周樹人), 20th-century literary giant who wrote under the pen name Lu Xun; the late Zhou Enlai (周恩來), premier of China; Jay Chou Chieh-lun (周杰倫), Taiwanese entertainer.
Zhou Shuren



Putonghua: Wu
Cantonese: Ng
Daniel Wu.
Origins: two generations before the establishment of the Zhou dynasty, in 1045BC, the founding king’s grandfather, the leader of the Zhou tribe, wanted to make his third son (the king’s father) his heir. The first and second sons, knowing their father’s intentions, made themselves scarce by leaving the tribe with their families and heading south. It would have been a very long trek from the home base of the Zhou tribe, located in present-day Shaanxi, to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and considering that the latter was then an undeveloped region peopled by barely civilised barbarians, it would suggest the exile was not entirely voluntary. When they reached their destination, the older brother became chief of the locals and when he died, the younger took over. Both brothers “went native” by tattooing themselves and cutting their hair. By the time the Zhou dynasty was founded, the Zhou king formally created the state of Wu, south of the Yangtze, and made his uncle’s descendant the ruler. The people of Wu began to take Wu as their shi name.
Famous Wus: John Woo Yu-sen (吳宇森), film director; the late Momofuku Ando, born Wu Baifu (吳百福), Taiwanese-Japanese inventor of instant noodles; Daniel Wu Yin-cho (吳彥祖), Hong Kong-American actor.
John Woo.