Migrant Chinese mainlanders changing names to blend easily into Hong Kong
- Source: Global Times
- [03:33 November 24 2009]
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An increasing number of mainland migrants to Hong Kong are changing the spelling of their surnames to avoid discrimination, a report said Monday.
Lawyer Raymond Tang told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post that his firm was seeing more mainland-born clients legally changing the romanized spelling of their name to appear more like local Hong Kong residents.
For example, some Putonghua-speaking mainland clients would ask to have "Zhu" changed to "Chu," and "Zeng" to "Tsang," he told the paper.
The romanization of mainland people and Hong Kong names is based on the pronunciation of Chinese characters in their respective languages – the mainland dialect Putonghua, also known as Mandarin, and Cantonese in Hong Kong.
"Some names in Putonghua pronunciation start with X or Z and many new migrants from the mainland want to change the spelling of their names to (local usage) in order to sound like a Hong Kong citizen who grew up in the city," Tang told the newspaper.
"Some whose names are only two characters also want to change them to three, as names with two characters are more common on the mainland," he was quoted as saying.
Statistics from the Immigration Department showed that there were a monthly average of 105 name-change applications in the first nine months of this year, higher than in the previous four years, the newspaper reported.
Despite their geographical proximity, the cultural and economic development of Hong Kong – which was returned from Britain to China in 1997 – and the mainland are vastly different.
In the past, mainland visitors to Hong Kong often complained that they were discriminated against and laughed at because of their accent and "cultural backwardness."
However, the situation has started to change in recent years, as the mainland has become a strong backbone for Hong Kong's economic development.
Recent cases of Hong Kong people complaining that some businesses, especially high-end retailers, are focusing their attention on super-wealthy mainland customers instead of locally-born shoppers.
Global Times/Agencies
