Ah-chow

[Roger Chen <ri.chen@sympatico.ca>]

I'll try to answer Jean-Francois' questions.

What you have spelled as Mei Xian, Mei Hsien & Moy Yan are all the same
and it is also referred to as Meizhou. And it is no longer a village,
but rather a  large city. If you scroll down through the forum you'll
come across "Travel to Meixian" dated Tue, 3 Oct 2000 which will direct
you other information about the area.

What you might have referred to as a "last" name is your surname. Or in
Chinese the family or clan name. Your dad is right in that the 'clan'
name is the first name.. your name may have been "chow pac ming" for
instance. chow ..your family or clan name; 'pac ming' .. your given
name.

It appears a common practice to add the phonetic filler "A" or "Ah" to
the names in Trinidad and Guiana, but never in Jamaica. It is the same
filler we use in "A-back" or "A-neung" or "A-moi" because it is awkward
to say plain "Chow" or "back" or "neung". If we leave it off "Moi", we
say "moi moi". In time Ah-chow becomes anglicized and ahchow becomes the
family name.

Sometimes "chow" is not the family/clan name; but could be part of your
given name e.g. "lee fatt chow". And the family out of convenience
addresses you as "A-chow". This then after years of usage became your
surname. So in genealogy it is imperative to get your family name
correct.

Most of our fore-fathers migrated to the Americas, West Indies,
Mauritius & S. Africa as indentured labourers. I know that those in the
Caribbean worked on the sugar plantations as labourers, and only after
their contract was over did they turn to operating small grocery stores.
Only a few who came after the 1900 with some wealth went directly to
become merchants.

The Hakka identify themselves ad being descendants of the Tang empire;
thus they call themselves Tang-nyin or Tong-nyin. We are also a very
prejudice lot [:-)] and believe that only the Chinese are people, and
the rest of the world is populated by spirits .. gui. So we refer to
them as white or black ghosts, pac-gui or woo-gui.

What you have described was still being practiced when I last visited my
family villages in 1995. The "honey bucket man" still made his rounds to
collect both the feces, urine and ashes.

Take your time to visit the contributions to the forum and you'll find
most of the answers to your questions.

Welcome to Asiawind.
roger chen