Why are there so many Wongs?

Soontir C'boath · Post by **Soontir C'boath** » 2003-09-01 03:38pm

Grand Moff Yenchin wrote:And if it's the "Yellow" Wong, it is spelled "Huang" as the Mandarin pronounciation.

No Wang is, I am not Mr. Huang heh.~Jason

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2003-09-01 04:39pm

Well, it depends on how you translate it. Using pinyin, "huang" is in fact yellow, although to be honest few can tell the difference between the "huang" and "wang" anyway.

InnerBrat · Post by **InnerBrat** » 2003-09-01 04:54pm

Bah! You guys are useless.

Marina: There are only about fifteen surnames that really are used in China.
Marina: The given name is what distinguishes the person.
IB: Fair enough. Thank you
Marina: This is very common in cultures of the region.
Marina: Western surnames are actually pretty weird.
Marina: Usually being a codification of profession.
Marina: Or in the case of Irish ones, an adopted clan name. But we're weird.
Marina: In the Mid-East they still use "Son of" names however.
Marina: And.. Honestly I'm not quite sure how surnames work in the Sinic cultural region.
Marina: I just know there are very few.
Marina: There are distinguishers between those of the commoners and nobility, however; but it is primarily the first name which provides the difference.
Marina: People usually marry outside of their own village to avoid the possibility of incest.
Marina: (this also increases the trade in women in the modern era.)
IB: That helps, thank you
Marina: Naturally of course the phonebooks are organized in the opposite direction over there.
IB: Of course.
Marina: Let's say Phong Nguyen, for instance. You'd look for him under the Ps, not the Ns.
Marina: Same in Iceland, actually, where they still use "son" or "daughter" of names.

Soontir C'boath · Post by **Soontir C'boath** » 2003-09-01 05:13pm

Darth Yoshi wrote:Well, it depends on how you translate it. Using pinyin, "huang" is in fact yellow, although to be honest few can tell the difference between the "huang" and "wang" anyway.

IIRC Wang and Wong also means King in another dialect. At least that's how I was raised to know of it.~Jason

Post by **RogueIce** » 2003-09-01 08:33pm

How else do you expect us to reproduce? Same with the Johnsons out there...

Ok, bad joke.

*clicks on www.mikewong.com*

Holy Moley!

Does this mean our Sith Lord can do some tricks, too?

*gets zapped by Force Lightning*

[Crispy]Yep, I guess so...[/Crispy]

*falls down*

Dorsk 81 · Post by **Dorsk 81** » 2003-09-01 09:52pm

I've found Wong to be a common name...not in the derogatory sense, but within 22miles there are at least 2 Wong families that I know of, now I know that dosen't sound like much, but if you were to come and see the place I'm talking about then you'd see what I mean.

Grand Moff Yenchin · Post by **Grand Moff Yenchin** » 2003-09-02 01:19am

Soontir C'boath wrote:
Darth Yoshi wrote:Well, it depends on how you translate it. Using pinyin, "huang" is in fact yellow, although to be honest few can tell the difference between the "huang" and "wang" anyway.
IIRC Wang and Wong also means King in another dialect. At least that's how I was raised to know of it.~Jason

I'm a king Wang. Pronounced "Ong" in Taiwanese. When I was in the states people used to pronounce the 'ang' as in "bang". A friend was Wong but his Wong was the Wang with three drops of water (which, adds the confusion since the only difference between these two words is the tone).

ps. Huang in Taiwanese is pronounced "Eng" and does get confused with Wang if not spoken clearly.

Grand Moff Yenchin · Post by **Grand Moff Yenchin** » 2003-09-02 01:28am

innerbrat wrote:Bah! You guys are useless.

Marina: There are only about fifteen surnames that really are used in China.

*flips the phone book"
I don't agree with this.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2003-09-02 01:55am

Grand Moff Yenchin wrote:
*flips the phone book"
I don't agree with this.

There are more in the official surname list, of course, but those are the exceptionally common ones, especially for the peasantry. I was going by a statement made regarding Nationalist-era China, so I'm not sure how much Mao shook up China. It could be very well that less common surnames are more common, and surnames traditionally reserved for people considered of the upper class, are now also in common use. So please take it with a grain of salt (Also there must be at least several ways to translate each surname, which increases the number in a western country--for instance, how many ways are there to spell Muhammed?).

Hethrir · Post by **Hethrir** » 2003-09-02 03:35am

'Chang' is actually the worlds most common surname.

UltraViolence83 · Post by **UltraViolence83** » 2003-09-02 05:53am

[fatjoke]That guy's got more Chins than a Chinese phone book![/fatjoke]

Darth Gojira · Post by **Darth Gojira** » 2003-09-02 08:22pm

How many Mike Wongs ARE there????!!!
Have they been cloning our incomparable webmaster, or something?

Mark S · Post by **Mark S** » 2003-09-02 10:52pm

Hethrir wrote:'Chang' is actually the worlds most common surname.

So if I changed my name to Mohammad Chang I would be the everyman?

MarkIX · Post by **MarkIX** » 2003-09-07 12:18am

I also had an experience with Wang's (pin yin spelling the character is 王) in one of my classes there were 11 out of 54 students
from what I was told there are only 100-200 surnames in Chinese now my thoughts are that the Surnames are more like Clan or House names than family names so it stands to reason that the king's Clan was the most populous of all the name I have encountered Wang is the most common although there are a lot of Zhangs (张) which I think is Chang in the Wade-Giles system.

Bug-Eyed Earl · Post by **Bug-Eyed Earl** » 2003-09-07 12:43am

Common last names in other Asian countries are Her in Korea and Nguyen in Vietnam.