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[pm1306]

A person born in Canton in 1940's. Name in Chinese passport (1964) is written and signed Mak Man Yeung. Surname was obviously Mak and given names Man Yeung or sometimes written Man - Yeung.  How would his name be written in Simplified Chinese please? Google Translate gives this for Mak Man-Yeung. Is that correct?

 

麦文洋

[Tiana]

The name is already in Simplified Chinese. Do you mean to ask how it is written in the official Pinyin? If so, it is "Mai Wen Yang" (which is how the name is read in Mandarin).

[pm1306]

No, I mean I want to put his name on his tombstone using Chinese characters and I want to make sure I spell it correctly. He signed his passport Mak Man Yeung. I cannot see his name written in Chinese characters anywhere in the passport, although I would not know what I was looking for. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_Chinese_surnames (entry 97) the symbol for the surname Mak is:

 

莫

[Lu]

麦文洋 is Mak Man Yeung in Cantonese, but the problem is that there are plenty of other options for characters, with the same pronunciation.

If it's a Chinese passport, it really should have the name in Chinese somewhere. But if you can't find it: do you have something else that might have this person's name on it? Letters in Chinese, his signature, his chop? A Chinese marriage certificate, if he was married? If he has Chinese family, that would be the first place to ask. Or if you know any of his sibling's Chinese name, that can also help a bit.

[pm1306]

Ok, I found two identity documents for him. Now I just need the computer generated equivalents of his hand-written name that can then be engraved on his headstone. Files attached.

[Kamille]

It's 麥文揚

[pm1306]

Thanks for that. I entered those numeric codes into this website: http://www.njstar.com/tools/telecode/index.php and it gave this (for the "cn" version)

麦 文 扬

 

which is slightly different from yours

 

 

麥文揚

 

Ah I see that yours is the HK/TW version of the codes. So I guess the question is what would be most appropriate. He was born in Canton, educated in Hong Kong, then moved to the USA.

[Tiana]

麦 文 扬

 

is the simplified version of

 

 

麥文揚

 

(Just saw your edited addition after I posted)

[pm1306]

Thank you very much for the help.

 

(Seems a bit strange that the CN version would be a simplified version of the HK version. I would have thought HK would be more likely to use simplified codes. But I know nothing of Chinese as you can probably tell.)

[imron]

Mainland China decided to 'simplify' a whole bunch of characters back in the 50s and 60s (though people had been discussing it since the early 1900's, and many of the simplifications were simply standardisations of existing handwritten forms - some dating back centuries).

 

So anything from 1960 onwards in Mainland China is likely to be simplified.  Hong Kong and Taiwan still use 'traditional' Chinese characters as do many overseas Chinese communities.

[pm1306]

On a Chinese tombstone showing husband and wife would the husband's name appear on the left or the right?

[skylee]

I suggest you use the traditional version of the name, ie 麥文揚, considering that (1) that is how he wrote his name: (2) Mak Man Yeung is how the name is typically romanised in Hong Kong; (3) he grew up in Hong Kong where the traditional script was and still is in use.

[Lu]

Skylee is right. 麥文揚 is the version you want.

[pm1306]

Thank you for the suggestion. We will adopt it.

Any idea about which side of the headstone he goes on please?