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Post by PattyL on Feb 21, 2019 11:51:40 GMT -5
My maternal grandfather, Don(g) Hoy Chu wrote his ancestral village was Hoi Sun, Guangdong. My mother used to mention Toisan on her side. I have located a Hoi Sun village in Taishan, Guangdong. The village surname, according to Village DB is LEE. 1) Is it possible my Dong family is from this HOI SUM village? I know there is close correlation with the Dong and Lee clans. I don't know if each village is singularly attributed to one surname only. (attached) 2) Why is the Dong name not listed in the Village DB ? ( attached is GGF's name below) I do not yet have the Chinese characters for Hoi Sum. My great grandfather moved to Guangzhou City after he returned from the United States. I have correspondence from his will and relatives from the early-mid 1900s, but so far I have only deciphered characters related to Guangzhou, not his birthplace ancestral village. I am still looking through documents.   Thank you! |
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Post by jeremychin on Feb 21, 2019 13:30:34 GMT -5
Hi Patty,
It is going to be much harder with out the characters of the village. You were a little luckier with your Sam Gar village as we were able to take guesses at the characters and because of that, expert Greg came through. No grave stone for your grandfather, or is that in Guangzhou?
The surname written in your post is the character 曾 which is romanized as Tsang in Cantonese and is listed as such in the village database (the Hoisan pronunciation is Dong/Dang). I am not seeing any village that resembles any romanization variations of Hoi Sun. Could this be another village that has split into many?
If you have any other documents you might be able to share with possible hints, please share!
- Jeremy
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Post by PattyL on Feb 21, 2019 15:30:21 GMT -5
Jeremy, I know I'm working from a handicap  The documents I'm extracting from are translated into phonetic English. The signatures and names, however, are written with their Chinese characters. All the relatives use the 曾 Don(g) So you are saying it is actually Tsang? I did an initial search for Dong using 曾 and you are correct. I could not find a Dong character that matched this one. Now there's a another mystery I have to uncover  Correct. The documents I'm holding were written from Guangzhou. The references to the ancestral village is from translated documents from the United States. I don't know yet where he was buried in 1955. Great grandfather does state in his English-translated will he was born in Taishan County, Guangdong Province. I have sent questions to two distant cousins who might have insight into your questions. Thank you! |
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Post by PattyL on Feb 21, 2019 16:42:19 GMT -5
Well this is interesting. Here is an English translated version of great grandfather's will from 1955. (ignore the date at the top. That's the date a relative translated the document). The name he is using here is Zen Yao-Yi. All of our US documents he signed when he was in the US around the turn of the century is Dong Yoo, with those characters. Is Dong also Zeng?  |
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Post by jeremychin on Feb 21, 2019 17:26:01 GMT -5
Patty, Handicap or not, you asking great questions and that is all you can do in order to progress in these discoveries. So, don't stop asking questions, and you never know what question sparks a key answer in your search! Also, every document or picture is an important one, so make sure to digitally archive them all and store them on a cloud. Zeng is the Mandarin spelling of Tsang. So, Dong (Taishanese), Zeng (Mandarin) and Tsang (Cantonese) are all the same. It is very curious that he used the Mandarin spelling of his name in his will as he was from Toisan and lived in Guangzhou for a time, all in southern China. I'm guessing that who ever translated it into English used Mandarin romanizations as is very common in the present day. I don't think your grandfather himself used that spelling at all. Very interesting document you have. You can find the Toisanese entry for the surname character in the online dictionary which is a great resource. It is within the link on row 70, column 3 on the following site which is great to bookmark for the future. sites.fitnyc.edu/users/gene_chin/hed/. I'm glad that you have some cousins; even though they are distant, they can can hold a few pieces of information that can unlock a lot more doors. Let us all know what you find out from them! - Jeremy |
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Post by PattyL on Feb 21, 2019 19:48:47 GMT -5
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Post by gckimm on Feb 21, 2019 21:42:53 GMT -5
Hi Patty:
It is quite possible that when your grandfather said he was from "Hoi Sun Village," he was really referring to Taishan/Toishan County. Using the
Taishanese pronunciation, the name of the county was often romanized as "Hoy Sun." Years ago, the Chinese in this country were not very specific when giving information about their places of origin. So you may still need to some detective work to find the actual village name.
Greg
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Post by Lue-Yee Tsang on Apr 9, 2019 13:47:24 GMT -5
That was what I thought too, Hoisaan in Taishanese being the same as Toisaan in Cantonese or Taishan in Mandarin.
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Post by Lue-Yee Tsang on Apr 9, 2019 13:48:32 GMT -5
Patty, I hope you get some good leads on this info. We have the same surname, and I too am Taishanese, so we may be from the same area in Taishan county.
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The documents I'm extracting from are translated into phonetic English. The signatures and names, however, are written with their Chinese characters. All the relatives use the 曾 Don(g) 
