CHINESE AMERICAN NAMES: Tradition and Transition

The naming practices of Chinese Americans are the focus of this work. Since Chinese immigration began in the mid-19th century, names of immigrants and their descendants have been influenced by both Chinese and American name customs. This detailed study first describes the naming traditions of China, providing a base for understanding how personal names may change in the interaction between cultures. One discovers that surnames are clues to Chinese dialect sounds, that many have been Americanized, that new surnames were created and that, in more recent decades as the Chinese American population has grown, new names practices developed and surnames have proliferated. Included are ideographs to surnames and an overview of their preservation by Americans of Chinese descent.

Emma Woo Louie of Palo Alto, California, is a second generation Chinese American whose concern about her children’s family knowledge led to this book. She also wanted to record for posterity the surnames spelled according to Cantonese and other non-Mandarin dialects that arose for Chinese Americans from the 19th century to 1950.