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Cantonese People's Attachment to Names in Hong Kong

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Cantonese People's Attachment to Names in Hong Kong Two Name Formation Systems in One Country: Cantonese People’s Attachment to Names in Hong Kong Fu Kin-hung Shin Kataoka Department of Chinese Language Centre Hong Kong Institute of Education Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Abstract In Hong Kong, personal names are written with Chinese characters and pronounced in Cantonese. Each name also has a romanized equivalent that reflects Cantonese pronunciation. This paper reports on a small-scale research project to investigate the attachment of Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong to their names and their attitudes to using mainland Chinese simplified characters in names and the use of Pinyin instead of existing romanization conventions. Introduction One’s name is used for identification of oneself. It is personal and one often has a strong attachment to it. In Hong Kong, names are written with conventional Chinese script and pronounced in Cantonese. Since English is the second official language, each name has an equivalent in romanization that usually reflects Cantonese pronunciation. Although older generations may have names in non-Cantonese romanization, Cantonese-based romanization is quite common among younger generations. Romanized names are used on official documents such as birth certificates, ID cards, passports, business cards, or when reported on English TV programmes and in newspapers. As Jernudd (1994) points out, constraints on the choice of names may arise from processes of political unification and from institutionalized state control over individuals. Due to the resumption of Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, it has been argued that Mandarin, or Putonghua as it is called in Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics 2,2 (1997); pp. 93–108 | 94 K.H. Fu & S. Kataoka China, will have a more important role to play in decolonized Hong Kong as a symbol of national unity. This might also lead to the adoption of Pinyin, which is the official phonetic system in China for the transliteration of Chinese, as well as to the conversion from the currently used conventional characters to the simplified equivalents used in China. The adoption of an unfamiliar system in Hong Kong may give rise to two issues. Firstly, Pinyin is based on Putonghua pronunciation and, therefore, names would look and/or sound different. Examples can be found in the use of unreleased finals in Cantonese (-p, -t, -k) that Mandarin lacks, or the use of voiceless and voiced letters in Pinyin to denote aspirated and unaspirated sounds respectively, which is not found in Cantonese romanization for names. Secondly, Hong Kong Cantonese speaking people might feel that their choice of names was restricted by the mainland system. The choice of names is, in fact, to be understood as an issue of language choice because, by nature, one’s name pronounced in one particular Chinese dialect presupposes that the rest of one’s speech is also in that dialect. Similarly, simplified script may be recognized as the mainland written system and its adoption in Hong Kong may therefore affect people’s perception of their own names. Some differences in the two systems are shown in Table 1. Conventional Simplified Cantonese- Pinyin Script Script based romanization 陳 陈* Chan Chen* 李 ರ Li, Lee Li* 黃 黃 Wong Huang* 何 何 Ho He* 張 张* Cheung Zhang* 歐 欧* Au Ou* 周 周 Chow Zhou* 麥 麦* Mak Mai* (Those different in the mainland system are indicated by asterisk.) Table 1: Name Forming Differences in Hong Kong and Mainland China Although no policy has formally been announced with regard to future changes in the name forming system, the issue has occasionally been addressed by Chinese language planning authorities. For instance, Li (1995), in his personal Two name formation systems in one country: Cantonese people’s attachment to names in Hong Kong | 95 view on the future language policy in Hong Kong, proposed that place names that replace colonial names and personal names for those born after 1997 should employ Pinyin as the official romanization, and that names should be put in the order of surname first and given name second. T'sou (1994) identifies three kinds of major difficulties that could result from such a policy: a. Violation of the attachment individuals might have for their traditional romanized names. b. Difficulties with individual identification on the basis of romanization based on a different and unfamiliar dialect. c. Difficulties with the legal basis for identification (e.g. for inheritance and criminal records purposes). T'sou’s focus was on romanized names. In our research, however, attitudes to the adoption of simplified script in formal name writing were also examined, as this was also considered to be a variable that relates to T'sou’s three difficulties. The results of our research do indeed indicate that the choice of script type is considered important in relation to people’s attachment to names. Taking T'sou’s difficulties into account, our paper first discusses the current name formation system both in Hong Kong and in China and then attempts to identify possible problems if the mainland system were to be implemented in Hong Kong. Lastly, our small scale questionnaire research will be discussed with reference to Hong Kong people’s attachment to their names and their immediate reaction to the mainland system. Current name formation policy in Hong Kong and China Hong Kong At present, the Hong Kong government has a free policy in terms of choice of names. In the course of birth registration, the surname usually follows that of the father. A given name is then chosen by parents. The registration should be made in both Chinese and English. Characters used in Chinese names should be included in the Hong Kong government’s reference book, known as the Chinese Commercial Code (CCC, Hong Kong Government, 1989). Some simplified characters are included in the CCC, though treated as different characters from the conventional equivalents to avoid misidentification. As for the system of romanization, there is no standardized system either for Cantonese or Putonghua and, while it is usually Cantonese-based romanization | 96 K.H. Fu & S. Kataoka that is chosen by parents for their child’s given name, Pinyin can also be employed on the parents’ request. Parents can decide whether the romanized given name is (1) the romanized equivalent of the Chinese given name, (2) another English (or Christian) name, or (3) both. They can also decide the order of their children’s surname and given name(s) in English. Alteration or addition of a given name, be it in Chinese script or romanized script, is possible until the age of 11, after which legal procedure is required (see the Births and Deaths Registration Ordinance, Chapter 174, Section 13). Applying the mainland system to the whole population in Hong Kong would inevitably involve altering existing names, which seems unrealistic under the present legal system. China The Chinese registration system is standardized. Simplified script and Pinyin must be used by all citizens except for minority nationalities, who are allowed to have their own romanization (see Chinese Language Reform Committee, 1974). In 1978, the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs also announced that as from 1 January 1979, Pinyin should be employed as the standardized romanized system when names of ethnic Han Chinese citizens are used in romanized diplomatic correspondence (cited in Wu, 1979). Possible problems with the adoption of mainland system in Hong Kong. If people born after 1997 were to adopt Pinyin for their romanized names, and if the legal system were to allow children to have a differently spelt surname from their father, two different systems would be put into effect concurrently. Since a Chinese surname is typically monosyllabic both in Putonghua and Cantonese, there would be many homonyms, which might cause identification difficulty (see Table 2), as also pointed out by T'sou (1994). Pinyin Cantonese 吳 Wu Ng 胡 Hu Wu, Woo 唐 Tang Tong 鄧 Deng Tang Two name formation systems in one country: Cantonese people’s attachment to names in Hong Kong | 97 黎 Li Lai 李 Li Li, Lee 萬 Wan Man 雲 Yun Wan 劉 Liu Lau 廖 Liao Liu Table 2: Identification difficulty in romanized Chinese Surnames Apart from the identification difficulty arising from its unfamiliar appearance, adoption of simplified script might cause similar problems. For example, the Cantonese surname Siu is written as 蕭 in Hong Kong and its simplified equivalent in China is formally 蕭 . However, this simplified character has another popular simplified version: 肖. Both are pronounced alike in Putonghua, and cause no confusion. In Hong Kong, however, the former would be easily recognized, but the latter might be regarded as a different character, which has a different pronunciation in Cantonese (see Table 3). Pinyin Cantonese Conventional 蕭 Xiao Siu Simplified 蕭 Xiao Siu Popular 肖 Xiao Chiu Table 3: Identification difficulty caused by Chinese script type Questionnaire research on people’s attachment to their names Research questions Taking the above points into account, we designed a small research project, in which we hoped to address the following research questions. 1) What is the people’s attachment to the current name forming system? | 98 K.H. Fu & S. Kataoka 2) What is their reaction to the possible adoption of the mainland system? 3) How would this reaction change if their name is used in different situations? 4) What do people wish the language policy in Hong Kong to be in the future? Methodology A questionnaire was designed to gather opinions on the above questions. It was composed of multiple choice questions in which the subjects were asked to make a choice regarding the personal name systems in different situations. After the questionnaire was administered, all the data were processed with SPSS/PC+.
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