Need help in figuring my Hainanese name

[TeddyLin]

Hi everyone,

I was born in Thailand but my ancestors used to live in Hainan island. My grandpa moved from Hainan to Thailand long time ago. He was the last one in my family who knows Hainanese. When I was born, my grandpa gave me the Hainanese name "LIM TIN DEK" (or probably "LIM TIN DIK") and wrote my Chinese name in a piece of paper. However, I never know the real Chinese characters in my name since my dad lost that piece of paper and my grandpa passed away when I was one year old. I would really appreciate anyone who can tell me or at least give me a clue how my chinese name is written. All I know is that the first character (LIM) is written as "林".

Thanks a lot for your help!

[yusie]

Hi, the problem with Chinese is that it is full of syllables that sound the same, but mean different things depending on the context. LIM was the easy part, since it is your family name. Tin Dek could mean anything (please note! I'm only speculating!) from 天地 heaven-earth [tian1 di4] in mandarin, to 添弟 add-brother (in the old days a very common first name for first-born daughters). I am not even sure DEK or DIK should be transcribed as DI in mandarin.

Good luck with your name-quest!

[TeddyLin]

Thanks a lot Yusie!

I was thinking about the issue of multiple characters with the same sound as well. One additional clue that I have is that my middle name (TIN) is somewhat used as a generation name in Hainan. My father told me that his name is "LIM SEE WAH", so he belongs to the "SEE" generation, and, with the same principle, I belong in the "TIN" generation. He told me that many people whose middle name are "SEE" or "TIN" can be found in Hainan island. Maybe anyone who is living in Hainan can point me out what the second character in my name is written. Maybe it will take my whole life to figure out all three characters.

[HashiriKata]

From the sound "DEK/DIK", I somehow think of 德 (Virtue), which is popular as a name and is often pronounced with a final "k" in many southern dialects. This guesswork, however, is completely unreliable and your best bet is to ask someone who speaks Hainanese, or some dialects which are close to Hainanese (Hakka, Cantonese?).

Failing that, if you could find out from your father or other relatives whether "TIN DEK" means anything, and we may be able to attempt some guesswork based on the meaning.

[pandaxiongmao]

Would it be possible for you to record your name in Hainanese and post it on the board?

By hearing the tones, one of my friends might be able to figure out the characters (I currently live in Hainan). As Hainanese doesn't have any well-known form of romanisation, my friends so far don't have a clear idea about the characters in your name.

[wai ming]

You could also try asking on the Other Dialects sub-forum of the Cantonese forums.

While I'm not sure if there are any Hainanese speakers there, I do know there are a few posters knowledgeable in Minnan dialect, of which Hainanese is a sub-dialect, if my memory serves me correctly.

[Mugi]

I've had a quick look in a couple of Hainanese reference books, and this is what I've come up with so far.

As Hashirikata suggested, 德 seems to be the only viable option for Dek/Dik.

However, for Tin, there are lots of options:

More likely: 新信申先辛辰善

Less likely: 仙神身囟腎

This list is by no means exhaustive - these are just the characters I managed to find in a half hour search through a couple of books.

Can your dad read Chinese? If so, does he recognize any of the above characters?

You could also try Googling a common surname (such as your own), followed by each of the characters I've given for Tin above, along with 海南(岛/省) and see if one of these seems to be a particularly common name in Hainan. Or leave off the surname and go for the middle and last character, which is almost certainly 德.

E.g. 海南岛 林辰

Or 海南 新德先生

[limtaohee]

hi,

i wanna know my hainanese name too!!! mine's lim tao hee.

tao's the generation name so i was wondering wad would be the name for the nex generation and so forth!! btw, im from malaysia

the thing is, my dad told me my name, tao, was a generation name given to me of which all my cousins have the same generation name. n the name was given to us from a book. my dad told me too that we have relatives from thai n that he had lost contact with them. last he visited them was 20 years back.

my granddad is from hainan island. my dad told me that my granddad had separated from his siblings when they left china. n that my granddad ended up in malaysia as another at thailand. if im not wrong, there are a few more other siblings.

bout the book, our copy of the book is somewhat lost and my dad told me that there's another copy with the relatives at thai. somewhat, we could be long lost relatives hhahaha

[skylee]

It is likely that your surname is 林 (prounounced as Lin in Chinese), a common Chinese surname which means "woods" (I used to work with a guy whose name is Lim and his Chinese name is 林). And your "tao" could be 道, meaning the way/road. And your "hee" might be "熙", but this is just a wild guess.

Are you in Sabah? I've found some charts on the family trees of a Lin clan from Hainan, which may or may not be relevant -> http://www.sabah.net.my/asys/Generation%20Chart.xls

There is a malaysian e-mail address on the chart. You might send an enquiry to the address to see if you could get more help.

If you find more information elsewhere, do come back and share with us.

[limtaohee]

oh...thks for the info...i showed my dad the chart n he mentioned both my dad's n granddad's names are in there. it might be a coincidence.

i cant seem to find the e-mail address in the chart. could you be kind enough to let me know wad it is. thks. i would find more info n repost again as soon as i get any info

and if possible, is there any chance that i could source for the generation book mentioned earlier?

[skylee]

this is the address on the chart - asys@tm.net.my