Married Women's Last Names

Every time when I need to fill out some official forms for the government or bank, I always get this comment, "Wow...you have a long name."

Why? Because I have my Chinese and English names plus the hyphenated last name which includes my maiden and husband's last names. Why did I do that? I will tell you later.

In the Chinese society throughout over 2000 years of history, women don't change their maiden name to husband's last name.

In the old Chinese world, men had several wives. They even greet their wives by their maiden names. This applied to the royal families, too.

A lot of Asian countries had been influenced by the Chinese culture. You will find this same practice to other Asian as well.

Nowadays, some women may add their husband's last name in front of theirs, like my mother's generation.

Before I got married, I didn't expect to change my maiden name to my husband's. But he wanted me to do so and understood where I came from at the same time. So, we finally came to a compromise to keep both names by hyphenated them.

In modern China, adding husband's last name is getting rarer and rarer. Like my sister, she never thought of changing her last name before and after getting married. Part of it because the position of women in the society is rising. But to Chinese women, keeping their last names had been old traditions for thousands of years.

Name Change

I was going through my card holder last week to archive some of the old name cards. And one of them caught the attention of my husband. So, I explained to him that that was my Aunt Pat's name card when she owned that company. When I told him that she always loves to change her name, my hubby raised his eyebrows.

It may sound very strange to a lot of people, including the Chinese. My Aunt Pat is a 200% superstitious person. She pays a fortune to her favorite fortune teller every year of the "Fung Shui" of her house and office. She also goes to him for her name and her children's names. If the fortune teller tells her that this name doesn't sound right or not match her date of birth very well, she will follow the instructions of him to change the name(s).

As you all know changing name just like changing your identity, you need to go through a lot of processes in the government to get it done. My aunt never thinks that this is a trouble at all. As long as she got her name changed as the fortune teller told her, she feels very comfortable to go through all these troubles. Believe it or not, I can't even remember how many times that she changes her name. And she is not the only one. There are Chinese out there doing this.

Adoption

In America, we see a lot of Chinese or Asian children adopted by American couples. It looks like very common here.

But if we traced back to the history before the communist one-child-one-family policy, it was very common in China, too.

Actually, adopting boys was the most common practice. And my brother-in-law's father was an adopted child.

For rich people, they usually adopt one child within the family in order to keep the blood line.

For the poor people, they sometimes adopt within the family like the rich. Sometimes, they adopt from somewhere, such as friends, children trafficking and so forth.

You may think that all the adopted children will have the father's last name. Not really......Some women from the privileged families would like to keep their families' names, especially if there were no boys in the youngest generation. Then, these adopted children will bear the last names of the mothers.

In conclusion, it is all about the succession of the families.

Hong Kong Establishment Day

Today is the 4th of July. For some reasons, it reminds me the day Jul 1, 1997. It was the day that Hong Kong, my home, was hand over back to China. It was under the Bristish colonial rule for 99 years after the 2nd Opium War 1898.

After this war, the Treaty of Beijing was signed. Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula were ceded to the Britain. The New Territories, north of the Kowloon Peninsula, were leased to the British for 99 years. But when the Chinese and British started their discussion of the Handover, the British decided to give back the Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula. The main reason was that the New Territories were not as advanced, urbanized and commercialized as the Hong Kong Island.

About 10 years before 1997, everybody in Hong Kong tried to find a way to immigrate to other countries, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, South Africa and the United States, because nobody knew what it would be like under the communist government rule. My family was one of them. These countries, especially Canada, made several billions of dollars because of the investment of these immigrants from Hong Kong. But we went back to Hong Kong in 1996. So far, everything goes great. Hong Kong still runs its government almost the same as it was under the British rule. We have a BIG financial support from China.

On the 4th of July, every county and/or town has its firework. I remembered that there were a lot of fireworks in 1997. When it comes to fireworks in Hong Kong, it is at least 20 times bigger in scale than anywhere else in the United States. And we had fireworks almost every 2 months that year.

Since 1997, Jul 1 is set as a public holiday to celebrate the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day.

Happy Jul 4th, everybody.

100 Chinese Last Names

My mom sent me quite a lot of my old stuffs that she dug out when she moved to a new place. And I found this list of 100 Chinese last names which I figured that a lot of people will be very interested in it.

The subscript is the Japanese pronounciation. And I circled the BIG 5 in red. Those 5 are the most popular surname you can find among the Chinese. And of course, mine is one of them. :-)

Enjoy everybody.