Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Snapshot one: My Name

My Name

Kara is my English name. I have another name in Chinese which is Man Fong. Some people always call me “Man Cheung” because “Fong” is my middle name. I have two brothers and one sister and their first name all named “Man”. Sometimes people say our name “Man Cheung”, we will make confused about which one they want to talk with.
In Chinese culture, some people will think that what name they have and they will have their own destiny and disposition of their name’s meaning. If I check the meaning of my name in the Chinese dictionary, my name has some meaning about my disposition. “Man” in Chinese is “文” means virtue and literary talent. “Fong” in Chinese is “芳” means aroma and fragrance. My last name came from my father. There is another thing and that is my father and my mother’s last name is the same.
I was born in China and I went to school in China until I was 11years old. When I was 11 years old I go to Hong Kong and had school in there. I needed to learn Chinese again because China and Hong Kong use different Chinese writings. China uses simplified Chinese and Hong Kong use Traditional Chinese. So, my name has a little bit different between simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. My last have different writing and pronunciation between China and Hong Kong. Hong Kong is writing “Cheung” and China is writing “Zhang”. Something like ngng the N will do.

2 comments:

Joel Caserta said...

This is pretty interesting, I knew that China has two different writing styles, Traditional & Simplified, but I never really knew the difference until now. Thanks for enlightening us :)

Kara said...

Before my name in simplified Chinese is Wen Fang Zhang, but right now is Man Fong Cheung.