Anybody here speaks Hakka?

[Woodson]

Could our Hakka speaking members and/or visitors please help me. Came across a document with this Chinese name, ³\¼Ö¦ñ. Yet the English portion shows the name as Ah Fond. Just wonder whether this was a Hakka pronunciation of the name or not.

Thanks

[twoupman]

The Hakka pronunciation of the personal name is 'pan' which is close to the Mandarin 'ban'. The Fond sounds more like the Cantonese 'pun' (poon). One cannot depend on the English transliteration of sounds because the person who wrote it was only guessing.

[jefferyseow]

Mandarin (hanyu pinyin) Cantonese (jyutping)
³\ - xˆz hˆz heoi2 fu2
¼Ö - yuˆo liˆjo lˆw lok6 ngok6 ok6 ngaau6 aau6 ngaau4 aau4 lok3 ngau6
¦ñ - bˆjn pˆji bun6 pun5 pun2 pun3

In Chinese names, the first character would be the family name and one of the other two characters would be the generation name and the personal name.

In some families, the middle character is the generation name eg. Chung Thye Phin, Chung Thye Cheong, Chung Thye Seong, etc. This is the case with my mother's father and his brothers.

In some families, the last character is the generation name eg Seow Shin Liang, Seow Tze Liang, Seow Chung Liang, etc as in the case of myself and my brothers.

Now, if you want to call someone by a nick name for example, you start with Ah and then his personal name. But for me and my brothers it would not do to call us Ah Liang, because then ALL of us would respond. So in our case, you would call us Ah Shin, Ah Tze, Ah Chung etc. Or in my grandfather's case it would be Ah Phin, Ah Cheong, Ah Seong etc.

The English portion of a lot of documents was filled up by, usually, translators and so it depends on the dialect of the translator himself and how the person to be written in has been introduced to the translator. In historical documents (government despatches), mining lease applications and court/legal suits, my great grandfather has been referred to as Chung Keng Kwee, Chang Keng Kwi, Cheang Ah Quee etc.

So, "Ah" is not a word. Think of it as the "y" in Mikey. The proper name is Michael of course. Ah is just a sound. Like Ah Jeff, or Ah Paul. It isn't a name. A great man in our history books is known as Chin Ah Yam. That isn't his real name. His real name is Chin Seng Yam. So no, "Ah" is not a Hakka way of "twisting" a name around but a Chinese way of sort of abbreviating a name.