NGUYÊN QUÁN: QUẢNG ĐÔNG - TRUNG QUỐC
[stating the Guangdong (廣東) province of Greater China (中國) as the country of origin]
It was a line of engraving on my grand-uncle's tombstone that inspired me to take a closer look into our family history.
Where it started...with a name
Grand-uncle, Tao Vien (Tào Viễn), was born Tao Cuu (Tào Cửu), to a younger brother of great-grandmother whose name is Tao Su (Tào Sự). Whereas grand-father, Thoi Hon (Thôi Hơn), was born Thai Hung (Thái Hưng 蔡興) to great-grandfather named Thai Nhat (Thái Nhật 蔡日).
Thời Thôi Thái - A common case of "off" transliteration
The Thai [蔡] (Vietnamese National script Quốc ngữ: Thái, Cantonese Chinese romanization: Choi) surname is pronounced as Choi or in variations of Tsai, Tsoi or Tsui.
One could have guessed, things would get lost; especially, in the process of mapping the sounding of word in one language to the equivalent scripting of the same word in another language. And that our family name was not among the avoidable ones!
As a result, the Thai surname was transliterated and registered as Thoi (in Vietnamese Thôi instead of Thái).
Yet in spite of the transliteration spelling mistake, we take pride in our special family name and come to accept the writing in both ways, Thoi or Thai.
But what has cracked us up the most was the way a nurse at the Cho Ray (Chợ Rẫy) Hospital calling out our last name as "Thời." Even though we were at the hospital for physical checkup in fulfilling the requirement of medical examination for immigration to the States decades ago, we often recall the event every one and a while as it is a part of our history behind the name.
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