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Dear Sinologists on Agora,

Last Monday evening I came back from Malaysia, where I met lots of interesting souls in an intensive seminar. As I was sorting their name cards, some of the Chinese participants have both an English name and a Chinese name. They tell me that Chinese population are obliged to get a Malay name and Christian names like Albert and Eunice are as close as they can get.

This causes some trouble for me. For 5 days I called this man Mike and now in order to write an email to him I have to look for his name card by the name Jong Li Sung or Sung Jong Li. I realise if I have their names in kanji form, I can get a fair chance of sorting out who is who and at the same time avoiding mistaking their family names as part of their personal name. Could you help me to get kanjis for the following names?

Chua Swee Leng (Female)
Su Ming Tan (uncertain)
Kok Leong (Male)
Loo Ting Pei (Female)

I am disappointed in the Sinophiles here at the Alpha Agora.

Perhaps you should try here,
Flam!

Sounds like you had a good time!

Apo

Su Ming Tan (uncertain)

Were you uncertain or were they?

Maybe it's "a boy named Sue"?

Very quick, Spiff!

Apo

Given the homophonic nature of the Chinese language(s) and the one-to-many nature of their representation by 漢字, it would be a bolder man than I, Flam, who would dare to make hard-and-fast pronouncements as to which of the latter lie behind an unfamiliar name represented in Roman letters. This is the case even with names read in Standard Chinese (or for that matter, in Japanese !), with which I claim some familiarity ; when it comes to languages like 廣東話 or 客家話, which seem to be the ones involved here, I simply have to confess my almost total ignorance. If you want to guess, Erik Peterson's On-line Chinese Tools provides a character dictionary with a (Yale) Cantonese look-up, but as I said, I should never have the temerity to use it in the case of personal names....

Henri