Pronunciation of a Malaysian author's name.

[Flying Pigeon]

Hi,

I'm reading a novel by the Malaysian author 许友彬. The pinyin pronunciation is Xu Youbin; the pronunciation listed on his publishing company's website is Khor Ewe Pin. I'm curious about this pronunciation. Is it Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Hainan, Foochow?

I've searched the Interwebs and asked a friend, but haven't found the answer. Thought I'd ask here.

Here is a link to the website:

http://www.odonatabooks.com/index.asp?p=/static/aboutus.html

His name is listed in the Background/缘起 section.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Orpheus]

I am 潮州人 and my family name is also 许. I think that is how I would pronounce the name in 潮州话, but I'm not sure that this pronunciation is exclusive to 潮州话 as Hokkien has very similar pronunciation with 潮州话. I don't know if the family name 许 is originally from 潮州 but I do know that a lot of people with this family name live in 潮州.

[anonymoose]

I can confirm what Orpheus said. Not that I know anything about this, but it's amazing what a little googling will turn up.

[lingo-ling]

In Hokkien:

許 has several pronunciations, among them khó͘ and khóa.

友 is iú

彬 is pin

[Amy （亞美）]

Yeah he's a Hokkien. Lots of Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese are Hokkiens, others may be Hakka or Cantonese. Their names are according to their bloodline - it's very hard to find a Chinese name in Malaysia spelled with standard hanyu pinyin.

许友彬 is a very famous author of school textbooks during my time in school. Now he's founded a publishing company called Odonata - with loads of teen novels with "good virtues" in Malaysian setting LOL. Great for intermediate level chinese learners