My late husband's grandfather's name was Dr. M.K.Wan.
His father's name was Mr. I.S.Wan, O.B.E., Esq. (Esquire - because he was given the Order of The British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.) He was also a Justice of Peace.
My late husband's name was Yin Shao-Chang, or Shao Chang Yin in the U.S. Most people called him either S.C. or Yin, since no-one around here could pronounce Shao-Chang correctly.
We have Romanization. We have Pin-yin. Now, the communist government has changed the spellings of many of the Chinese surnames.
Never mind.
If this confuses you too much, ignore this!
The other thing is: the Chinese name has the family name first and the given names follow. So you call Sun Yet-San, Sun Yet-San, and not Yet-San Sun. And you call Mao Tse-tung, Mao Tse-tung, not Tse-tung Mao. Only we unimportant people had to reverse our names to conform. WHEN IN ROME . . .
No and No, he was Not adopted!
The reason for the different last name in spelling is because of the different ways of how one pronounces his last name; depending on ---
Are You Ready for This?
Which Dialect you are speaking.
The Chinese character (word) is the same. We thank the Emperor, the one who was buried with all those terra-cotta soldiers, for unifying the Chinese Language - making the written language ONE. But alas, he could not do anything to unify the different dialects.
How many dialects do we have?
Hundreds!
In speaking, how you pronounce the words depending on which part of China you are from.
Then, there is Mandarin - Mandarin is not a dialect. It is the Official language of China, by Law.
So here goes -
the name YIN -
My mother, being form Shanghai, would say, Ying,
The Wans, being Cantonese, would say,Wan,
In Mandarin, it is Yin.
So my late husband used the Mandarin pronunciation for his Papers when he was an Interpreter for the U.S. Armed Forces and the Chinese government in WWII.
Talk about being confused, wait until you try to prove that S.C. Yin is the son of I.S. Wan.
Now, I cannot tell you how many people's last names changed when they went through Ellis Island and Angel Island.
So, here you have it.
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