Grandparents roots

[ljainak]

:)HELLO,
I AM A 3RD GENERATION CHINESE-AMERICAN. MY GRANDFATHER CAME FROM A PLACE NAMED'TOISAN,HOY EN TAITAN, CANTON CHINA. PLEASE HELP ME OUT IF THIS SOUNDS WRONG. I HAVE
GATHERED THIS INFO FROM FAMILY MEMBERS WHO ARE NOT QUITE ACCURATE. I AM IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING OUR GENEALOGY GOING WITH MY FATHERS SIDE OF THE FAMILY. OUR FAMILY NAME IS 'MAH', WHICH I UNDERSTAND IT TO MEAN 'HORSE'. MY FAMILY NAME STARTED AS 'MAH, THEN TO MAR'. WHO KNOWS WHO MODIFIED IT, SIMPLIFIED IT, ETC..WOULD APPRECIATED SOME FEEDBACK.
LJK77

[Henry]

Hi ljainak,

Welcome to our Forum.

It would be helpful if you could provide the Chinese characters for:

Name of you father, grandfather, great grandfather

Name of your ancestral village

If there are Chinese characters on the gravestones of your ancestors, please take a digital photo and post on this Forum. We have members that can translate.


Henry

[lachinatown]

Mah and Mar are the same, just different romanization spelling in English, 馬 / Ma / Mǎ (horse)

Please go to www.c-c-c.org/villagedb/search.cgi to see all the villages for this surname.

[laohuaqiao]

According to the village database, there are Ma/Mar surname villages in what was West Hoyin/Haiyan in Taishan. Even though village database does not list an village named Taitan, there is a Dadan 大担 village found with Google Maps and its nearby villages are listed in the village database as Ma/Mar villages. So, I suspect this is the one.

West Hoyin/Haiyan has become town of Wencun 汶村.

Its address is :
广东省 江门市 台山市 汶村镇 大担村委会 大担村 529235
Dadan Cun, Dadan Administrative Village, Wencun Town, Taishan City, Jiangmen City, Guangdong, China 529235

Google maps, enter the coordinates to search "21.88, 112.452", zoom into low enough level, you'll find Dandancun.