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Post by kerry on May 4, 2005 15:56:15 GMT -5
I am trying to figure out if these places are the same with just variant spellings or if they are indeed different places. If they are variant spellings of eachother, what is the most correct spelling of the locality? The places are:
1. a)Si Yap b)See Yap c)See Yup
2. a)Ning Young b)Ning Yon c)Ning Young d)Ning Yan
3. a)Sung Ning b)Sun Ning
4. a)Yong Wo b)Yung Wah c)Yung Wo d)Yen Wa
I am not very good with Chinese or China's geography. If you know of any other variant spellings of these places that I should also be looking for, please let me know.
Thanks!
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Post by Woodson on May 6, 2005 0:43:38 GMT -5
I can answer 2 of the 4: 1. a)Si Yap b)See Yap c)See Yup They are one and the same meaning the 4 counties. In Pinyin it is siyi. Sun Ning is the old name for present day Taishan or Hoy Sun. Not sure about Sung Ning. Would you happen to have any of these written in Chinese? It would make it easier.
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Post by southsloper on Dec 5, 2005 17:20:00 GMT -5
Sorry to update such an old thread but this might help others?
1) Othe spellings: Sze Yap / Sze Yup / Sei Yap
3) Also could be seen as " Xinning"
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Post by helen on Jan 1, 2006 6:59:34 GMT -5
The above appear to be from the 4 counties, or See Yup. They came from Canton to New Zealand - and were the operators of laundries.
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Post by David Wong on Feb 25, 2006 18:25:58 GMT -5
I grew up learning the name of my village to be "Foong Siu Long", as was taught by my grandparents. However, when I recently viewed my grandfather's head tax certificate, it identified the village as "Wing On Lay".
Unfortunately I couldn't ask any living relative, as those with knowledge to my ancestral village have passed away. So what gives with the two different place names?
When I visited my ancestral village, I asked about the "two different" names of the place. And the answer I got sort of confuses me even more. And that is that there is an "official" name, and one "localized" and/or village name for the place. Anyone else come across this fact?
And when I checked out the database of Taishan/Kaiping village database, I found a number of villages sharing the same name. Eg. "Wing On Lay" occurs in a number of different locales for clans with the same and even different surnames. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who can enlightened us on this.
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Post by Woodson on Feb 26, 2006 17:40:29 GMT -5
I think Wing On Lay is the larger area and official name. Foong Siu Long is part of Wing On Lay and is known among the locals. The closest analogy I could think of is Kerrisdale and Vancouver.
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Post by David Wong on Feb 27, 2006 18:49:18 GMT -5
You may be right Woodson, but I think it's more than that. The info i got is that the surrounding area is called Magonglung (Majionglong) and my ancestral village is Wing On Lay (identified as Yong'an Le on a Diaolou study commissioned by the central Chinese gov't) - one of a cluster of villages in Magonglung (I also note that the Kwan family site, which this Siyi Genealogy site has a link to, also references the webmeister to Magonglung www.kwanfamily.info/lineages/1.html ...I guess that means our ancestors may have known each other). There is no written record on what my grandparents had informed me - that my ancestral village was named "Fong Siu Long" (Hoyping dialect)...the local name, so again, it may be an unofficial (?) version of my ancestral village. Some of the other things that may be of help for all of us doing our roots quest, is to explore the last written character in each of our own village... ie, village names almost always end with Tsuen or Le. So begs the question: the meaning of "Tsuen or Cheen" in Cantonese....which i believe means "village", and "Le or Lay" in Cantonese which I believe means "lane". Any experts out there who can verify or clarify?
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Post by Raymond on Mar 4, 2006 7:19:00 GMT -5
My rudimentary understanding of the proper way to identify your ancestral village area in rural Guangdong Province is to specify the district, town and village (in that order). For example, my ancestral village would be identified as Sun Wui, Goo Jeong, Cheong Sah (expressed in local Anglicized dialect) - - Sun Wui is the area district; Goo Jeong is the nearest town; and Cheong Sah is the name of the village. Thus, when asked where in Guangdong my family is from, my reply would be "Sun Wui, Goo Jeong, Cheong Sah"......and invariably this identification method pinpoints exactly where my family is from. I believe many early overseas Chinese sojourners provided widely varying locational information on official forms, letters and gravesite markers largely due to the fact that often a small village is obscure and not very well-known, so the name of a district, or nearest town or area is denoted in lieu of the village name for ease and familiarity for locational identification purposes. My understanding is the term "chuen" is the word for village; the term "heung" is the word for a sub-district which is made up of one or more villages; the term "kee" or "doo" is the word for district; and the term "in" is the word for county. To add to the confusion, as an area evolved over time, its official geographical boundary has often been changed or the location renamed by the residents or by the government, and what were once a county is now a district, or what were once a district is now a city, etc., etc. This is why you often get different answers to the same question, and the answers provided could all be correct depending on who you asked. It's this sort of complexity that makes Chinese genealogy both interesting and terribly frustrating at the same time.
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Post by Woodson on Mar 4, 2006 20:46:10 GMT -5
Ci Yuan (辭源) says that li (里) means housing (宅院). Initially it comprised of 25 families but varied from time to time. During the Spring Autumn period each li had 80 houses. This was increased to 110 during the Ming dynasty.
Another meaning is where the merchants gathered and lived and is kmown as xu (壚) or market place.
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Post by twoupman on Mar 8, 2006 0:03:56 GMT -5
Raymond, can you please identify the Chinese characters for your "kee" and "doo" to mean a district; and "in" to mean a county?
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Post by Raymond on Mar 8, 2006 16:03:28 GMT -5
twoupman,
Being non-fluent in Chinese, I am offering a convoluted way of pinpointing the appropriate Chinese characters for "in", "kee" and "doo". The Chinese character for "in" which means "county" can be found in the zhongwen.com website under "dictionary" by typing in the word "county", thus yielding 2 Chinese characters for "county". It is the second Chinese character that I can identify as meaning "county".
The Chinese character for "kee" meaning "district" is simply written as an opened square with the left side opened and enclosing 3 smaller boxes, one atop two like a pyramid.
Finally, the character for "doo", also meaning "district" can be found in the "Insight Pocket Travel Dictionary - Chinese" under the word "du" which is defined as "city" or "capital".
I apologize for the roundabout way of directing you to the appropriate Chinese characters of interest. Hope this helps.
Raymond
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Post by David Wong on Mar 8, 2006 16:31:11 GMT -5
Raymond's descripton of the Chinese character for district "Kee" was most graphic... and that's the beauty of this written language. I can "see" the rationale for the evolution of the character - a cluster of villages embraced by a larger outline.
C'est magnifique!
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Post by twoupman on Mar 8, 2006 16:33:44 GMT -5
Raymond,
Thank you for explanations, it worked out great. I will attempt to display the characters here. This is the "in" 縣 which is a county (xian in Mandarin/yuhn in Cantonese); is "in" a Zhongshan dialect? Your "kee" is å€ (qu/keui) and your "doo" is 都 (du/dou) to mean a town or city or capital and is not used for a district. The Cantonese shown is in Yale romanization. At least it clears the air with your three terms.
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Post by twoupman on Mar 8, 2006 16:40:09 GMT -5
Raymond,
Thank you for explanations, it worked out great. I will attempt to display the characters here. This is the "in" 縣 which is a county (xian in Mandarin/yuhn in Cantonese); is "in" a Zhongshan dialect? Your "kee" is å€ (qu/keui) and your "doo" is 都 (du/dou) to mean a town or city or capital and is not used for a district. The Cantonese shown is in Yale romanization. At least it clears the air with your three terms.
I am re-posting this message again because to see characters in the previous posting you need to goto "View" select "Character Coding, Auto-Detect "off" and select Unicode UTF-8. This time I have already done it first so the characters should appear without any further manipulation.
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Post by Raymond on Mar 9, 2006 7:37:32 GMT -5
twoupman,
Am happy to be of assistance in my elementary way. To answer the question in your message, yes..........the Romanized dialect for the words "in", "kee" and "doo" is the Zhongshan dialect.
Raymond
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