Names

I was reading the Post Magazine and came across a reflection by a Singaporean in HK about unusual names in HK. It was Hextan, I myself have come across names like England, Queenie, Cesario ... I no longer find any name very shocking.

Anyway this reflection article said he did an online search on the name Hextan, and the closest he came to was a small village in Hertfordshire, England, called Hexton. Apparently using places names as personal names has a long history, especially among the Chinese.

"Surnames such as Huang, Chen, Zheng, Wu and many others were originally the names of feudal states of the Zhou Dynasty (1064BC-256BC). These states were rented out to relatives of the ruling famiy, allied clans, descendants of former dynasties and able servants who had helped found the dynasty. Over time, the rulers and citizens of some of these terrotories took the names of the fiefdoms as their family names. Not all Chinese surnames were orginally place surnames, however, the most common Chinese surname Wang, (literally Prince), refers instead to the rank of the clan's progenitors."

A bit of insight on my surname. According to Wikipedia, the three most common surnames in Mainland China are Li, Wang and Zhang, which make up 7.9%, 7.4% and 7.1% respectively. Together they number close to 300 million and are easily the most common surnames in the world. How Zhang became Teo is because of Hokkien or Min Nan translation. Min Nan, or "Southern Fujian" language) refers to a family of Chinese dialects which are spoken in southern Fujian and neighboring areas. Many of the diaspora emigrated to SE Asian nations, and i think my grandma is from Shantou, which is an Eastern Guangdong prefecture.

An aside to this post is that after Chinese New Year, when the weather gets warmer, I will start backpacking into nearby areas in China.