Goo Tan Yong village, Sun Ning district

[leo84]

Had a bit of a break through in that I tracked down a descendent of the man who I knew as my G Grandfather's employer. She told me pretty certainly that they were actually father and son! (while I suppose these things are never 100% certain, some familial similarities seem to be present from their respective photos)

So, this man who I now have reason to think was my GG Grandfather, went by various names, including, Leo Sing Fong Gee Wo, surname as indicated in an earlier thread here was signed as "Leo 廖 (Liao in Mandarin)."

He said he was born in 1864 in the village of Goo Tan Yong, in Sun Ning district.

I did not find the village name in the village database. Liu is a listed surname, but the character looks different, and in any case, I did not see the village listed under that name.

Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on where to go from here?

[Henry]

Hi Leo84,

The following link shows the variants in the romanizations of your family name - look under ranking 61

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_Chinese_surnames


Because, there were several romanizations used to Westernize Chinese names - there is great variation in Chinese names - so confusing that it is ironic that we now have to use the Chinese characters to differentiate and clarify between romanizations - please post the Chinese characters for the name of your ancestor village and perhaps we can locate it for you.

These Chinese characters can be found on gravestones, letters/envelopes, immigration papers, etc.

Regards,


Henry

[leo84]

I've had no luck finding Chinese characters for his village but I did come across another document that names his birth village as "Foo Tou Young village of Hoy Shan district."

I did find this document in Chinese in his CEA case file, but I don't know what it is:

lh3.googleusercontent.com/-N2t3IPruNUU/TWlE_AHNb2I/AAAAAAAAAjU/KLoI8cxYSE8/s983/chinatext.JPG

[laohuaqiao]

Foo Tou Young is Fu Cho Yeung in village database (Tou is Taishanese and Cho is cantonese)

c-c-c.org/villagedb/display.cgi?level=Village&id=1097

The coordinates for 甫草洋, Fucaoyang in Mandarin, are "22.0831, 112.7777", which can be found with Google Maps by entering coordinates in search.

[rmcbride1970]

My 2nd great grandfather is chequong gee Leo wo and I believe this is the same person. I don’t know much about him but I am from his second wife. Any information helps to learn more about him.