Trying to figure out my dad's village

[jimnyo]

Hello all, my dad's surname is Soo (蘇, or apparently 苏 in Pinying). I wanted to visit his village in a couple summers when we plan to do an Asia trip. He moved here when he was 13 and can't remember the village name well. He says he thinks it was something like "Dai Muk Day". I do know it's in Guangdong Province and I think it's near Guangzhou. I visited it once w/my mom in 1985 when I was 13, and she told me she had to find some random taxi driver who knew where it was because it wasn't on any maps. I know this is a long shot, but does anyone know of this village?

[jeremychin]

Jimnyo,

It is going to be hard to figure out the village with just the pronunciation of the name. I searched in the Siyi village database for villages under your surname, but none sounded like what you wrote. You can have a look for yourself. villagedb.friendsofroots.org/search.cgi. You do not have any written characters for the village, or letters that family might have written back and forth from china to here? Or any pictures of the village that might have any writing on it or in the photo? Do you have any family still there? Does your father speak Cantonese? If he is able to say it with the proper tones, someone who is fluent in speaking and read/write might be able to figure out the characters based on hearing it. 

Also, pinyin, which you mentioned above is how a Chinese character is written in the romanization for the Mandarin dialect. The character you posted, 苏, would be called the simplified version of 蘇

These are some helpful links:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Chinese

www.globalizationpartners.com/2016/11/09/the-difference-between-traditional-and-simplified-chinese/


- Jeremy