HELP. Looking for the JIA PU of surnames Li/Lee

[adelinemiller]

Hi All,

Im looking for the JIA PU of Surname Li/Lee, those that came from a small village called ''JI SHUI CUN'' in China.

Anybody can give some advises?? THANKS!! 

[Henry]

Dear Adeline,

Welcome to our Forum,

It is almost impossible to help you based upon the information you have provided.

Please provide the Chinese characters for village name, the name of the nearest market town, nearest large city, county & province in China.


Henry

[adelinemiller]

Hi Henry,

Thks for replying. 

i do have a google map link of the village:-
Village - Ji Shui Cun

However i got no other info ... thats y dont even know where to start my search. 

[twoupman]

adelinemiller,

At least you have the location of the village Jishuicun (急水村). Here is one new piece of information for you, it is in Chaozhou Prefecture (潮州) in northern Guangdong Province (广东省) near the border with Fujian Province (福建省). This means the person spoke the Chaozhou (潮州) dialect and as you pointed out his surname was Li/Lee (李). In all that is a pretty good start.

twoupman
houseofchinn.com

[adelinemiller]

Hi,

really appreciate your reply.

However im still quite stuck. I need the jia pu to name a baby, so where do I start looking for that jia pu?

[Doug 周]

adelinemiller,

I assume you want the generational poem to name a child. I have a copy of my Zupu but the generational poem is not located in my document. I even tried to work backwards and discern a pattern amongst my ancestors by listing of given names, but to no avail.

Therefore, finding you Zupu might not help. The effort to find your Zupu will require more genealogical investment on your part. The Zupu’s were systematically destroyed during the Cultural Revolution because of the threat to the governance to Chairman Mao. As readers of this site will know, the Zupu's are in private hands and you will need to access the network of elders usually via field work in your ancestral village. You might be lucky that a distant cousin would have published their Zupu or at least the Jiapu in the LDS Church, Columbia, or the Shanghai or Guanzhou library. Just now is the Shanghai Zupu library is coming online.

However, before you even attempt to start any online search, you will need to do Genealogy 1A. You will need to interview your elders and search their personal archives for Chinese characters. This requires earning the right to interview them. Maybe a group of the child’s first cousin will have the same generational name and hence make your task easier. Occasionally the poem is listed on an elder’s gravestone. As all true genealogists say: study first what you know best ie your (extended) family.

Henry and twoupman emphasized your need to confirm the Chinese characters of the given names of as many of the child’s ancestors and the ancestral village.

Finally to give yourself more time to research for the child’s name, consider studying twoupman’s web site on Chinese names. The Chinese initially gave ‘milk names’ to their children. At coming of age (age 20), they were given genealogical (Zi) names and many preferred to choose names representative of their perceived personality (Hao) . These were their official names. Case in point is the founder of the Republic of China Sun Yatsen, who is better known in China a Sun Zhongshan. It is rude for others to call people by their milk names in public in adulthood.

This should give you more time, unless the place where the child resides demands an official Chinese name early in life.

IMHO