黄 By Any Other Name
26 July 2005 — Wow! What a coincidence! Imagine my surprise yesterday when I found out that Amy, my closest classmate (together with Sumie) of 3.5 years turns out to have the same surname as myself. With her Vietnamese Chinese heritage, her surname is “Huynh”, and me, with my Singaporean Hokkien background, I have the surname “Wee”. But it turns out that in Chinese character, both our surnames turned out to be 黄! (for those who can’t read Chinese, it means “yellow” or “royal”) Isn’t that amazing? Mebbe centuries ago, we both stemmed from the same family in some village in China?!?
Sumie then translated the rest of Amy’s Chinese name 玉美 into Japanese, and it’s “Tamami”. Tamami!? So cute right? I also wanted a cute Jap name so asked Sumie to quickly decipher mine. Sadly, there’s no 莹 character in Kanji, only got 贞, which Maiko (Sumie’s daughter) gleefully informed me is SADAKO! Wah lao! The Ring’s Sadako? So scary!!! Not cute at all!
August 9th, 2005 at 8:05 am
My dad wants me to clarify:
Hi girl,
Got to clearify the surname ‘ wee ‘
Actually dad surname should be ‘ lim ‘ but because of some grandfather or grandmother tradition/custom, your surname was changed to ‘ wee ‘
It all started on my father’s mother side of the family. That is your greatgrandmother (your paternal greatgrandmother). Your greatgrandfather was married into a family that had no male heir. So the second son must bear the girl side surname ‘ wee ‘. So lucky or unlucky, your grandfather was the choosen one to carry the surname ‘ wee ‘ Where else his other brothers all are ‘ lim ‘ In other words the old lady who was at that time living at Thomson Road was surname ‘ wee ‘ That was my grandmother I knew which was my father’s mother (paternal) and also your greatgrandmother I never met my mother’s mother. That is my maternal grandmother in my life.
So we have no actual ‘ wee ‘ blood in us but the ‘ lim ‘. We are related to 6th uncle ( jonathan’s dad) some where some how.
Are you clear now? You have to update your web.