Call Me Durian
A couple of weeks ago, I signed up again with NOW Broadband TV. For you out-of-towners, I should explain that NOW is one of the two big Hong Kong pay TV services. Here in Asia's high-tech capital we get our cable TV through broadband internet connections. It would be great if it actually worked all the time, and even better if the company offering the service (PCCW) wasn't part of a communications monopoly owned by the son of Li Ka Shing.
I'm not much of a television watcher, but Ah Go and David are big football fans, and they are both locked into long contracts with the other Hong Kong cable tv service, which recently lost its deal to show games from the English Premier League. When the EPL season is over in May, the league games will shift to NOW and Ah Go and David face a football watching crisis.
One thing you learn in Cantonese Hong Kong is the importance of being a good friend. Friendship is serious business here, and it involves grave responsibilities. Like enabling your good buddies' football-watching addiction. Since I didn't have a cable contract, I can sign up with NOW broadband without incurring thousands in penalty fees. So, now I have HBO, and Ah Go and David have access to the next match season. Yat Geui Leung Dak! One act, two accomplishments. Two birds with one stone.
How do you sign on with this marvel of modern high-technology information delivery? Email? A phone call for service? Wrong! As everyone in Hong Kong knows, unless you want to pay top dollar, the way to sign up for cable tv is to head out into the street at evening rush hour. Walk around until you find a young, chubby guy with a skin problem wearing a garish vest or windbreaker in the TV company's colors. This eager fellow will either be holding a thick ringed notebook, or standing by a folding table. Approach him. He is your connection.
You have come to this meeting armed, of course, with a small flashlight and a magnifying glass. This is so you can examine the details of the six or seven different contracts that the cable representative will offer for your confused perusal as hundreds of pedestrians rush by. The deals and their particulars change weekly, so be clear about what you want (the cheapest rate and the shortest term, with no decoder fees or deposits).
Although they will urge you to do autopay, insist on paying in cash--if the company's accounting screws up and takes too much money out of your account, you will have to do heavy kung fu with PCCW's offshore customer service phone center in Guangdong to get your money back.
When you hand over the cash, the company rep will walk you to the nearest 7-11 to get a receipt (the chain store that never sleeps serves as NOW tv's billing agent). Transaction concluded, he will hand you your contract, tell you to call him if there's any problem, then give you his business card:
Piaget Chan
Piaget?! Your name is Pi-a-ZHAY? Like the watch?
"Pi-AH-jet", corrects the salesman. "Like the watch, yes."
Yat geui leung dak! I've just signed a good deal for cable--and scored killer points in the ongoing competition my friends call: "Find The Most Outrageous Over-the-Top Real Life Hong Kong English Language Name".
"Piaget" is good, but it is still not enough to knock my friend Francis from his lead position in this contest. It's going to take some work, because he has gems on his list like "Sincerely Hu", "Intel Lau" and the chart topper, which was printed on the nameplate of the cheerful young woman who used to serve him coffee and egg McMuffins every morning at the McDonald's in Hung Hom:
ALIEN WONG
You can pretty much divide Hong Kongers into generations, based on the English language names they use. Anybody over 45 will probably sport a common and somewhat archaic British name like Margaret, Grace, Gordon, Alan, Alice or, perhaps, Donald. But under 45, things start to get looser. Among 35 to 40 year olds you'll find Tiffanys, Jennys, Jackys and Eddies. Then, below the age of 35, the dam breaks open in the Chinese-to-English name game: Serendipity, Durian, Ecstasy, Napoleon.
Francis thinks these off the wall names are great, as do I (someone with a given name like mine has to!). Sure, they risk sounding goofy, but the names of this generation show creativity and self-expression, sometimes inspiration (there's a journalist named "Mandela Yip"). Most importantly, through names you can track a fascinating evolution in Hong Kong's bilingual culture.
Many of those Empire-approved English names tacked onto members of the older generation, as you might guess, were put there either by aspirational parents, or by British schoolteachers. The first day of class, you come in, and Miss Peabody points at you, Chan Wah Ming, and says, "You are Robert Chan." And, for the rest of your school career, and possibly your life in the Anglophone sphere, that's that.
Occasionally, more tuned-in parents who didn't want to trust a teacher's random choice would equip their child with an English language name before they entered school. Some of these names, like Hong Kong's Canto-English signs and place names, cleverly worked both sides of the linguistic street. For instance, my friend Wilson's Chinese name is Wai San. A "Siu Lan" could be Susan, a "Mei Lai" a Mary.
In Chinese medium schools, though, a lot of kids never got tagged with English names--Long Hair is Leung Kwok Hung, and has never been known as John or William or Fred Leung. And when most of Hong Kong's schools shifted away from English to Cantonese-language instruction after the handover in 1997, the old practice of the teacher handing a child an English name on the first day of school sputtered out. And that's when the fun began.
All over the world, names zip in and out of fashion. Nowadays, in the U.S., people tend to give their children the names of celebrities. And so, in the 90s, America spawned a generation of Heathers and Jennifers and Ashleys, and now we are experiencing a wave of Angelinas and Chloes and Brittanys.
But there aren't any celebrities, in Hong Kong or otherwise, named Sincerity or Flourish. So what gives?
It is the marvelous logic of Cantonese-English bilingualism at work here. Now that English naming has been freed from its colonial-era constraints, choosing an English name has become more like the process of choosing a Chinese one.
Chinese given names, as most of you probably know, are suffused with meaning and tradition, even a bit of superstition. In English we say "give the child a name" or "name the child." But in Cantonese, you don't use either of those constructions, you say goi meng, which literally means to replace the child's existing name with another. The implication being (at least as I understand it) that all little spirits are born with the perfect spirit name that can't be known. Our responsibility, as parents, is to come up with an earthly name to equal the spirit one, a name that harmonizes with the child's qualities, and balances out any bad luck baggage the child might be dragging into the world.
Grandparents used to be the family members in charge of the serious business of child-naming, although nowadays the process is more of a family collaboration. Still, when my (Korean-American) friend Leslie gave birth to her son, her Cantonese mother-in-law immediately had the child's horoscope drawn, and then strongly advised the parents the baby needed to have a Chinese character with fire radicals in its name, to balance its excess of Earth elements.
Go ahead and chuckle, you skeptics and rationalists. But it is uncanny how often Chinese given names hold the seeds of the future adult's personality and destiny. The "Kwok Hung" in Long Hair's name stands for "Hero of the Nation." The "Yam Kuen" in Donald Tsang Yam Kuen translates as "Under the shelter and blessing of the authority".
Anyway, the predilection of contemporary Hong Kong kids to pick themselves names like "Destiny", "Forever" or "Harmony" makes sense, when you look at it from a Chinese naming point of view. They are looking for names which, like Chinese character names, convey positive qualities and good fortune. And names like "Gucci", "Diamond" and "Piaget" are the English language equivalents of Chinese names like, say, Wing Faat--forever prosperous.
I have a naming story that goes in the other direction, from English to Chinese. When I arrived at Chinese University for my first Cantonese language classes in the summer of 2002, the program registrar asked me for my Chinese name. Of course I didn't have one. And so, a teacher in the program was assigned to come up with a suitable and harmonious Gwong Dung Wah moniker for me. I wasn't completely happy about this arrangement--like contemporary Hong Kong kids, I wanted to pick my own. But my teachers just shook their heads. "You must let us choose it. It will sound better."
So, like a generation of Hong Kong Margarets, Winstons and Emilys before me, I just nodded like a good student and said, "Okay."
The following day, my excited teacher came to class with my new Chinese identity. She was thrilled at how she'd been able to come up with three characters that worked both in Chinese AND matched the sound of my name in English. But when she unveiled the name by which henceforth I would be known in the New Yale in Asia Chinese University of Hong Kong Cantonese Language Center, my heart sank:
麥蘭恩
Mak Laan Yan. The "Mak" is a common Cantonese surname that's often given to Westerners with a Mc or Mac last name. No problem with that. But the "Laan Yan"--roughly, "Graceful Orchid"--was way too girly and frilly for my taste. It sounded to me like a flower vase, or maybe what you'd call an elderly ex-Amah in a Wong Kar Wai film. Naming girls after flowers, or using characters like "Mei", beautiful, is a Chinese cliche. Enlightened and intellectual parents no longer saddle their female children with sugary, flowery Chinese characters. The cooler trend is to give females more gender-ambigous Chinese names with literary or intellectual allusions.
In English, my given name is unique, an invention of my mother's that I've never heard or seen elsewhere. But in Cantonese, I am but a flowerpot, a Mary, a Suzie, a Plain Jane. I think, sometimes, that I should ditch the graceful orchid business and goi meng--that is, re-christen myself with some Chinese characters that have more distinction, that more closely match my own personality and character. (Or at least my idea of it!)
But my Chinese naming skills are still not up to this complex task. Also, I'm afraid I'll faux pas it as badly as the poor girl at the McDonald's in Hung Hom did with her English name.
And who wants to risk turning herself into an Alien Durian?
I'm not much of a television watcher, but Ah Go and David are big football fans, and they are both locked into long contracts with the other Hong Kong cable tv service, which recently lost its deal to show games from the English Premier League. When the EPL season is over in May, the league games will shift to NOW and Ah Go and David face a football watching crisis.
One thing you learn in Cantonese Hong Kong is the importance of being a good friend. Friendship is serious business here, and it involves grave responsibilities. Like enabling your good buddies' football-watching addiction. Since I didn't have a cable contract, I can sign up with NOW broadband without incurring thousands in penalty fees. So, now I have HBO, and Ah Go and David have access to the next match season. Yat Geui Leung Dak! One act, two accomplishments. Two birds with one stone.
How do you sign on with this marvel of modern high-technology information delivery? Email? A phone call for service? Wrong! As everyone in Hong Kong knows, unless you want to pay top dollar, the way to sign up for cable tv is to head out into the street at evening rush hour. Walk around until you find a young, chubby guy with a skin problem wearing a garish vest or windbreaker in the TV company's colors. This eager fellow will either be holding a thick ringed notebook, or standing by a folding table. Approach him. He is your connection.
You have come to this meeting armed, of course, with a small flashlight and a magnifying glass. This is so you can examine the details of the six or seven different contracts that the cable representative will offer for your confused perusal as hundreds of pedestrians rush by. The deals and their particulars change weekly, so be clear about what you want (the cheapest rate and the shortest term, with no decoder fees or deposits).
Although they will urge you to do autopay, insist on paying in cash--if the company's accounting screws up and takes too much money out of your account, you will have to do heavy kung fu with PCCW's offshore customer service phone center in Guangdong to get your money back.
When you hand over the cash, the company rep will walk you to the nearest 7-11 to get a receipt (the chain store that never sleeps serves as NOW tv's billing agent). Transaction concluded, he will hand you your contract, tell you to call him if there's any problem, then give you his business card:
Piaget Chan
Piaget?! Your name is Pi-a-ZHAY? Like the watch?
"Pi-AH-jet", corrects the salesman. "Like the watch, yes."
Yat geui leung dak! I've just signed a good deal for cable--and scored killer points in the ongoing competition my friends call: "Find The Most Outrageous Over-the-Top Real Life Hong Kong English Language Name".
"Piaget" is good, but it is still not enough to knock my friend Francis from his lead position in this contest. It's going to take some work, because he has gems on his list like "Sincerely Hu", "Intel Lau" and the chart topper, which was printed on the nameplate of the cheerful young woman who used to serve him coffee and egg McMuffins every morning at the McDonald's in Hung Hom:
ALIEN WONG
You can pretty much divide Hong Kongers into generations, based on the English language names they use. Anybody over 45 will probably sport a common and somewhat archaic British name like Margaret, Grace, Gordon, Alan, Alice or, perhaps, Donald. But under 45, things start to get looser. Among 35 to 40 year olds you'll find Tiffanys, Jennys, Jackys and Eddies. Then, below the age of 35, the dam breaks open in the Chinese-to-English name game: Serendipity, Durian, Ecstasy, Napoleon.
Francis thinks these off the wall names are great, as do I (someone with a given name like mine has to!). Sure, they risk sounding goofy, but the names of this generation show creativity and self-expression, sometimes inspiration (there's a journalist named "Mandela Yip"). Most importantly, through names you can track a fascinating evolution in Hong Kong's bilingual culture.
Many of those Empire-approved English names tacked onto members of the older generation, as you might guess, were put there either by aspirational parents, or by British schoolteachers. The first day of class, you come in, and Miss Peabody points at you, Chan Wah Ming, and says, "You are Robert Chan." And, for the rest of your school career, and possibly your life in the Anglophone sphere, that's that.
Occasionally, more tuned-in parents who didn't want to trust a teacher's random choice would equip their child with an English language name before they entered school. Some of these names, like Hong Kong's Canto-English signs and place names, cleverly worked both sides of the linguistic street. For instance, my friend Wilson's Chinese name is Wai San. A "Siu Lan" could be Susan, a "Mei Lai" a Mary.
In Chinese medium schools, though, a lot of kids never got tagged with English names--Long Hair is Leung Kwok Hung, and has never been known as John or William or Fred Leung. And when most of Hong Kong's schools shifted away from English to Cantonese-language instruction after the handover in 1997, the old practice of the teacher handing a child an English name on the first day of school sputtered out. And that's when the fun began.
All over the world, names zip in and out of fashion. Nowadays, in the U.S., people tend to give their children the names of celebrities. And so, in the 90s, America spawned a generation of Heathers and Jennifers and Ashleys, and now we are experiencing a wave of Angelinas and Chloes and Brittanys.
But there aren't any celebrities, in Hong Kong or otherwise, named Sincerity or Flourish. So what gives?
It is the marvelous logic of Cantonese-English bilingualism at work here. Now that English naming has been freed from its colonial-era constraints, choosing an English name has become more like the process of choosing a Chinese one.
Chinese given names, as most of you probably know, are suffused with meaning and tradition, even a bit of superstition. In English we say "give the child a name" or "name the child." But in Cantonese, you don't use either of those constructions, you say goi meng, which literally means to replace the child's existing name with another. The implication being (at least as I understand it) that all little spirits are born with the perfect spirit name that can't be known. Our responsibility, as parents, is to come up with an earthly name to equal the spirit one, a name that harmonizes with the child's qualities, and balances out any bad luck baggage the child might be dragging into the world.
Grandparents used to be the family members in charge of the serious business of child-naming, although nowadays the process is more of a family collaboration. Still, when my (Korean-American) friend Leslie gave birth to her son, her Cantonese mother-in-law immediately had the child's horoscope drawn, and then strongly advised the parents the baby needed to have a Chinese character with fire radicals in its name, to balance its excess of Earth elements.
Go ahead and chuckle, you skeptics and rationalists. But it is uncanny how often Chinese given names hold the seeds of the future adult's personality and destiny. The "Kwok Hung" in Long Hair's name stands for "Hero of the Nation." The "Yam Kuen" in Donald Tsang Yam Kuen translates as "Under the shelter and blessing of the authority".
Anyway, the predilection of contemporary Hong Kong kids to pick themselves names like "Destiny", "Forever" or "Harmony" makes sense, when you look at it from a Chinese naming point of view. They are looking for names which, like Chinese character names, convey positive qualities and good fortune. And names like "Gucci", "Diamond" and "Piaget" are the English language equivalents of Chinese names like, say, Wing Faat--forever prosperous.
I have a naming story that goes in the other direction, from English to Chinese. When I arrived at Chinese University for my first Cantonese language classes in the summer of 2002, the program registrar asked me for my Chinese name. Of course I didn't have one. And so, a teacher in the program was assigned to come up with a suitable and harmonious Gwong Dung Wah moniker for me. I wasn't completely happy about this arrangement--like contemporary Hong Kong kids, I wanted to pick my own. But my teachers just shook their heads. "You must let us choose it. It will sound better."
So, like a generation of Hong Kong Margarets, Winstons and Emilys before me, I just nodded like a good student and said, "Okay."
The following day, my excited teacher came to class with my new Chinese identity. She was thrilled at how she'd been able to come up with three characters that worked both in Chinese AND matched the sound of my name in English. But when she unveiled the name by which henceforth I would be known in the New Yale in Asia Chinese University of Hong Kong Cantonese Language Center, my heart sank:
麥蘭恩
Mak Laan Yan. The "Mak" is a common Cantonese surname that's often given to Westerners with a Mc or Mac last name. No problem with that. But the "Laan Yan"--roughly, "Graceful Orchid"--was way too girly and frilly for my taste. It sounded to me like a flower vase, or maybe what you'd call an elderly ex-Amah in a Wong Kar Wai film. Naming girls after flowers, or using characters like "Mei", beautiful, is a Chinese cliche. Enlightened and intellectual parents no longer saddle their female children with sugary, flowery Chinese characters. The cooler trend is to give females more gender-ambigous Chinese names with literary or intellectual allusions.
In English, my given name is unique, an invention of my mother's that I've never heard or seen elsewhere. But in Cantonese, I am but a flowerpot, a Mary, a Suzie, a Plain Jane. I think, sometimes, that I should ditch the graceful orchid business and goi meng--that is, re-christen myself with some Chinese characters that have more distinction, that more closely match my own personality and character. (Or at least my idea of it!)
But my Chinese naming skills are still not up to this complex task. Also, I'm afraid I'll faux pas it as badly as the poor girl at the McDonald's in Hung Hom did with her English name.
And who wants to risk turning herself into an Alien Durian?
There are many ways to pick a name. One is to pick the name of someone you admire and whose name you like. Another is to pick a friend's name and change the 2nd character the way people of the same generation in a family do. Then go around asking if the name sounds appropriate or if there is a better character.
Reply to this
When I first moved to HK, I asked the office admin to give me a Chinese name. She said I should wait a month so she could choose something appropriate. At the end of the month she came back with "Shek Tat Fu." Shek Tat sounds kind of like my surname. And she explained that Shek was rock or stone and Tat Fu was teacher or scholar or doctor. So I liked how loosely translated this meant I was "Dr. Rock."
So I put it on my business cards, even had it embroidered on my dress shirts. People would look at my card and tell me I had a very good Chinese name and smile.
Two years later someone finally told me it was a pun, because it sounds close to Sic Tofu - eating tofu, which has somehow come to mean a guy who is always chasing women. Well, it still kinda fit, so I've kept it to this day.
By the way, Singapore actress Suen Kai Kwan, English name Paulyn Sun, for awhile was using the English name Alien. That's right. Alien Sun.
Reply to this
Westerners getting Chinese names in Hong Kong is often viewed upon as a positive ritual of being accepted into the Chinese culture. This invariably will be treated by the locals with great admiration and appreciation. However, Chinese retrofitted with English names in the US/UK is a totally different game. You may look upon by both your fellow countrymen or Westerners as "trying to be white". Many Chinese students overseas will obtain English names soon after their arrival in US/UK. However, often times, after several years, some of them will abruptly stop using their selected English names. Was it a sign of rejection of the Western culture? May be. I also know of cases where Chinese parents in the US/UK will insist on their offsprings to not have English names. Chinese chauvinism? Possible. After so many years living in different Western societies, I found out that keeping my Chinese name without using my English name is a plus.
Reply to this
Interesting story. I even learn something about business -- "[7-11] as NOW tv's billing agent".
Nice discussions about HK and US names. "Sincerely Hu", "Intel Lau" Oh dm, too funny. I almost had soup (I was having lunch) coming out from my nose!
By the way, Freakonomics has discussions of US names. The authors (one is a prof from U of Chicago) had a neat discussions about some US names (which I think includes Brittany).
Reply to this
Hi DM. I have just thought of one name that you might like: Mak Dai Yun. I don't use the usual surname character but choose the word that means "silent or quiet" for "Mak" (sorry I have to be a bit long winded as I am not yet equipped with Penpower Jr., which I am about to install). For "Dai", I use the character that means "bring". For "Yun", I just use the same character as in the name that you don't like. Put together, the three words literally means "quietly bring graciousness (to this world)"! That's exactly what you do with your good sense of right and wrong and of social justice!
Reply to this
Really, m' gaam dong! You are too kind.
But I wonder, can you use characters like the other "Mak" and "Daai" in Chinese names?
My Cantonese teacher in New York City, who knows me more personally than did my CUHK teachers, tried to re-do my Chinese name, and he chose for the surname the "Mak" character that means black, or ink. (Because I am a writer, he explained). But when I tried that out on friends in Hong Kong, they said, oh, you don't want to have such an odd character for a surname....
Not to mention that it was hard to remember how to write!
Reply to this
I, like your New York teacher, am thinking outside the box. It's no big deal for a Westerner to have an unusual Chinese surname. The word Mak that means silent has been used as a given name by a famous Chinese writer (Li Mak). The other Mak that your teacher used (which means black, ink) is the family name for the respected Taoism founder (Mak Tse).
Reply to this
I have top send emails to Dancing Chen, and Carrot Cheung, but my wife has the absolute winner. In her office there is a young woman named "Chlorophyll Yihp". And the woman's sister is "Photosynthesis Yihp". Apparently their father is a botanist with a keen sense of humour.
Reply to this
But i think you are a beautiful orchid!
Reply to this
Ed Note: This last comment is from a friend with an orchid collection who once took me to the annual festival of the South Florida Orchid Society.
Hmm. Maybe my teacher got that orchid connection right....
Reply to this
Interesting stories :)
There's a Chinese surname that I really like and might suit you: 沐 (muk). It has an air of elegance the common 麥 lacks, well, probably because it's rare.
Or... how about choosing a Chinese name without any reference to the pronunciation of your English name at all? Then you can pick whatever characters you like.
Reply to this
I don't really mind the common "Mak" character. Part of the reason to have a Chinese name is convenience--so people who aren't that comfortable with English can remember and write down your surname. I find "Mak" most useful for leaving phone messages, dehng toi, etc. Everybody knows what it is.
It's the dancing orchid part that makes me cringe a little (apologies to my friend Laura the orchid grower).
Your "muk" character looks interesting though because it seems to combine water and wood, which is not a combination that you'd expect to find....except in boats I suppose!
Reply to this
Well, 沐 means bathing or showering if you look upon the dictionary, and it gives a bizarre Christian meaning of "showering under grace". :)
And 墨子 (Mo Tzu/Mozi, Mak Tsi) is not the founder of Taoism, but of his own philosophy, Moism, which subsequently lost, other than some tradesmen.
Your quirky given name makes me think of 大山, a famous Canadian celebrity of Chinese, though I think you won't like that in your name. :)
Reply to this
Many many years ago, on a business trip to Japan, I had cards made up with my English name on one side, and the 大山 characters on the other.
As you can imagine, much laughter ensued whenever I did the formal "exchange" with anybody Japanese!
It was a great icebreaker, except for all the Japanese who wondered if my name was "O-yama"
Reply to this
Oops, you are right. But Mak Tsi was nevertheless a great scholar/thinker.
Reply to this
To add salt to the wound Laan Yan as a pun could also mean lazy person. Not sure if you would prefer that :oP
Reply to this
Ha. I was waiting for someone to mention that.
For you non-Cantonese speakers, the word for orchid, Lan, sounds like the word for lazy--laan. The word for person is "yan", but pronounced in a much lower tone than the character of my name.
But close enough to be dangerous.
Reply to this
The "Geui" in "Yat Geui Leung Dak" is 舉, not 句. So, it should be "One move, two accomplishments", not "One phrase, two accomplishments." A bit surprised that no one has pointed this out in 17 comments. Is it against netiquette to do so? Or should I use the email? I think the writer wouldn't mind as this blog is "Learning Cantonese"?
Reply to this
Please! One of the reasons I started this site is that I was hoping that wiser and more fluent readers will correct me....that's why I'm still "learning Cantonese".
This is one case where I leared to speak the phrase, but was never taught the character. I always assumed it was "geui" as in sentence or phrase doing double duty (a writer would jump to that conclusion!). But now I will never forget that it is "geui" as in "geui haang"....Thank you. I will correct it in the text.
Reply to this
I am not sure if uou can read Chinese, but I guess leaving a comment in Chinese may help you learn more :P
你的網頁真正幽默，若每天讀多過一篇恐怕會笑死。留言感謝你帶來的歡笑。
恕我多口，你的中文名字除了發音像「懶人」外，亦像粗口「乜撚野」或「乜撚人」。希望這不會違反網絡禮儀。
Reply to this
Naughty girl! Now you are giving everyone bad ideas. But I know that the kids in Hong Kong probably do this to each other in school when they are growing up. In Kempton's documentary film, there's a little girl who is named something that sounds like "Ga Si"...and all her classmates are calling her "Furniture."
(Thank you for the nice comments, and I am happy to hear the blog is making you laugh...I promise not to make you laugh-until-die).
Reply to this
I don't think the name your teacher gave you is that girly, especially when the yan character is actually rather gender-neutral.
The Chinese names of me and my sister (仰山 & 若山), otoh, are pretty masculine (one came from the Book of Odes (高山仰止), and the other from the Book of Lieh Zi(峨峨兮若泰山)), though our English names are rather quaint and feminine (Alexandra & Rosalind), and the middle syllables of the English names match the last syllable of the Chinese ones. As you can see, my dad had spent quite a bit of time on naming his children (I rather suspect that he actually wanted sons but was too politically correct to say so).
Reply to this
I have come across a "Keyboard Wong", but he is from Taiwan, not Hong Kong.
Reply to this
Spike - "sic dofu" usually applies to a guy who acts like he's trying to help/comfort a lady, but is really trying to pick her up. Your business cards might give away your strategies in advance and the ladies will end up telling you to "sic ling mo" - eat lemon.
Reply to this