Fuzhou anyone? Where is Ku Yu and Koo Ming?

[christine]

I know this is the Siyi (Say Yup/ Thlay Yeep for those who speak it) forum, but thought I would ask anyway, does anyone have some familiarity with Fuzhou as an area and Hokchiew as the local dialect?

I am looking to figure out more about a couple who emigrated from places called "Kuyu" and "Koo Ming" to British Guiana (now Guyana) back in 1865.

Here are the details from the transcribed passenger list from www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~guycigtr/Sevilla.htm

#5991 Kong Chun Ling [age]22 [Trade]Pedlar [village]Ku Yu [allotted to plantation name]La Grange [surnames of descendants]Kong

#5992 Chan She (F) [age]32 [village]Koo Ming [allotted to plantation name]La Grange

#5993 Kong a Man [age]7 [village]Ku Yu [allotted to plantation name]La Grange [surnames of descendants]Kong

So, all I have to go on is a few Romanized names, ages, Romanized village names, and the fact that this happened in 1865 between China and British Guiana. I know this group of three is a family. I believe the age of the first person listed is a typo, probably he is 32 not 22.

What I can infer is that Ku Yu and Koo Ming villages must not be too far from each other, wherever they are. And I can guess that the way they were pronounced may be influenced by the local dialect of Ku Yu and Koo Ming villages, but I'm not certain of which locality they belong to, so it could be any dialect really.

It is a possibility that Ku Yu could be a location in modern day Fuzhou, mapped here: maps.google.com/maps?q=kuyu,+fuzhou,+fujian&ll=25.672009,119.624805&spn=0.112479,0.198269&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&gl=us&z=13&vpsrc=6

However, I am not entirely convinced this is the place just because I can't find another "Ku Yu" yet. I know from looking at a Foochow dialect to English dictionary that the pinyin used by Google maps is indeed similar enough in pronunciation/Romanization to the Foochow dialect.

The other thing I want to explore, is where the heck is Koo Ming? Could also be Romanized as Ku Ming, Koo Min, Koo Men, Ku Min, Ku Men, or whatever else you can imagine. I can't find such a place near the Ku Yu on the map yet. So I want to know:
- Does anyone know any special history about folks from Fuzhou area and an island such as Ku Yu emigrating in the mid 19th century to the Caribbean? I have been looking in to books about Chinese in the Caribbean but I'm just really unfamiliar with Fuzhou's emigration history versus my more comfortable understanding of Guangdong's history and place names.
- Does anyone know if there is or was a place that sounds like Koo Ming in Fuzhou or around Ku Yu?
- Does anyone recognize these two village or region names immediately as somewhere else instead, not Fuzhou at all?? Maybe I am barking up the wrong provincial tree?
- Finally, since there is a known descendent line of Kongs, does anyone have any knowledge about the KONG family in British Guiana AND/OR Trinidad & Tobago? The story goes that the child in this family went to Trinidad later and started a family there, and so would have brought the Kong name with him we think. Or there may have been other siblings born in Guyana that stayed and kept the Kong line going there, who knows.

Thanks,
Christine

[laohuaqiao]

I can ask some of my Fuzhou friends. But, before I do that, I'm assuming that you have other documentation indicating the Kongs were from Fuzhou? The reason I ask is I don't recognize all the names of the places of origin of the passenges, the ones I do are all in Guangdong.

[twoupman]

Christine,

The passenger listings are shown in transliterated Cantonese done by Englishmen while the village in the Fuzhou Google map you found is in Hanyu Pinyin (Mandarin). In essence you had the dialects mixed up. So, the Ku Yu is really not in Fuzhou, it was just by accident you hit on the same name. In the old days most of the immigrants from Fujian Province (福建省) were from the southern part in what is known as Minnan (閩南).

Here is my take on the two village names: Ku Yu = Koo Yu = 高要 (Gaoyao/Gou Yiu) and Koo Ming = 高明 (Gaoming/Gou Mihng). I use Yale Cantonese Romanization. Regional Cantonese dialects may vary slightly and hence the slight change in the transliterations. Both these places are quite close to each other and are located west of Guangzhou (廣州市). You can find it by using Google Maps.

Hope that helps in your search.


houseofchinn.com

[christine]

Thank you both so much. I think this is in Guangdong instead of Fuzhou, it makes a lot more sense this way and especially with the locations of "Gaoyao" and "Gaoming" pronounced similarly to Ku Yu and Koo Ming in Cantonese, within the same vicinity of each other. The names on the list sounded to me so Cantonese, but as you said transliteration and Romanization can mix things around so much that it is really difficult to figure out what the real words are. Thanks twoupman for debunking the Fuzhou lead, and thank you laohuaqiao for your offer, luckily it sounds like we will be able to refocus our search around the east-of-Guangzhou area for clues instead. I did not have good evidence the Kongs are from Fuzhou, as twoupman stated, the pinyin would lead me to that as a possibility but it looks less and less like Fuzhou is the origin.

The descendant I am trying to help really does not have a lot of info to go on at all, his great grandfather was this Kong A Man we think (he became known as Peter William Amann later), and he started a life in Trinidad with a non-Chinese woman, and so the Chinese line became very much less Chinese by now via constant marriages to other non-Chinese with each generation. So, he is trying to piece together small clues here and there. I will post an update when we get further with this new info, I am very excited!

Aw deh thlai