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hello everybody,

Long time no "see". I haven´t check this site for a long time, since I`ve been out of China for a while. In any case I have a question about my Grandfather’s family name and I really hope somebody can help me.

My mother just sent me my grandfather’s last name and the supposed Chinese characters. I`ve been looking up in the dictionary, but the written name I got doesn´t match the pronunciation and I don´t quite find the right character.

The last name of my grandfather is supposed to be Chiu. He was from Guangdong province and the characters I got look something similar like this: 佳 侓 (it supposedly have 5 horizontal strokes).

What do you think?

Well, I hope to hear from any of you, who masters written and spoken Chinese!
Xiexie in advance!

I guess family name Chiu is spelled Qu or Qiu in pinyin now. Chiu is the old spelling. Maybe this hint will support you in your search.

Thank you Palle for your super quick reply, I already look for options resembling the name in the dictionary and even tried to write the character in the dictionary tool at nciku.com.
But I will keep looking! Thanks

i did a little research but i have to admit that i couldn't found these character with similar prunounciation either. everything i got by searching for the pronunciation 'chiu' you can see in the following link:
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.p ... &cdqcanr=0

i'm not sure whether it will help you or not.

kind regards

//edit:

if he's looking for a Cantonese surname which pronounces like Chiu, then it's 90% 趙

It is also not easy for Chinese to find the chinese origin character, if you only have the latin spelling.

There are some wikipedia articles about chinese surnames and their english spelling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... e_surnames" target="_blank

If you are searching signs for Chui, then it will be something like 徐(Xú) or 崔(Cuī).

If we suppose, his name was Qui in pinyin, then it cound be one of these signs:
For Qiū: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi%C5%AB_(surname" target="_blank)
or for Qiú: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi%C3%BA_(surname" target="_blank)

I hope, some of these suggestions can help you.
But non of them looks like 佳 or 侓.

//Edit:

incues hat geschrieben:

if he's looking for a Cantonese surname which pronounces like Chiu, then it's 90% 趙

Yes, it can also be one of these signs: 邱(Qiū), 趙(Zhào), 朝(Cháo), or 就(Jiù).

...you found your self with the same problem I have. I have this character that doesn´t match the sound. I can only guess the character is wrong, since it seems this character doesn´t exists. There are similars, but not the same one. I will have to keep looking! thanks for helping!

pao hat geschrieben:...you found your self with the same problem I have. I have this character that doesn´t match the sound. I can only guess the character is wrong, since it seems this character doesn´t exists. There are similars, but not the same one. I will have to keep looking! thanks for helping!

Just put the character here. You most probably have checked a dictionary in mandarin, which has great differ in pronouciation than the canton dialect and a different PinYin system. As a matter of fact, the name "canton dialect" itself is an example for this gap, as it is pronounced and written "GuangDong dialect" in mandarin. So the character has not necessarily to be wrong only because it appears to sound different in a dictionary. Without seeing the character itself it's hard to tell.

Gruss
/dev/urandom

In his initial post he already gave us these characters: "佳/侓".
Me and my girlfriend (der Esel nennt sich immer zuerst) have discussed it shortly yesterday, but we haven't found any connection between this characters and the pronunciation. it seems they are not really related. Could it be that there are any differences between HongKong and GuangDong pronunciation?

Hi pao,

but 崔(Cuī) looks a little bit like the sign, that you are searching for.
It has the 亻part and has also 5 horizontal strokes.
And it is a popular chinese family name, that will be spelled as Chui in Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation.

Greetings
hifi

...i dont know how to paste here the picture of the stroke I got from my mom.
But in any case it looks like this: 仹 , but it has 5 horizontal strokes (instead of the 3) and the bottom stroke is longer...does that make sense?

I really appreciate all of you trying to help me to find out the name.

PD: Hifi, I already looked at this character 崔 , but the top is different, I also thought that could be.

does 焦 look familiar?

According to yutopian.com it's pronounced either Jiao or Jiu

Ich vermute soll "Qiu" sein, wie folgende 丘，邱. Weil mit der Aussprache Chiu ähnlich wie Qiu aus.