My last name

[daryane tjuk]

Hey guys.

 

All my life I’ve been wondering what my last name means or what it actually is in the Chinese language. My name is Surinamese Chinese, meaning it is translated weirdly. My ancestors were kinda like “slaves” in Surinam so the last name is just written down how it sounded like. 
 

But what I’m confused with is.. that my grandpa who I got the last name from he is Javanese/Chinese from Surinam. So is it really Chinese or is it Indonesian?  Can y’all help me with this? 

my last name is: Tjuk Tjauw Tjin 

[Flickserve]

How old is your Grandfather?

 

is your last name Tjuk or “Tjuk Tjauw Tjin “?

[Jim]

Might be 祝 https://zidian.aies.cn/MTEzNzE=.htm

[Lu]

From what I know, the Surinamese surname 'Tjuk Tjauw Tjin' means OP's ancestor's full name was Tjuk Tjauw Tjin, and since Dutch officials didn't know how any of that worked, they just put the entire name as surname. Such triple surnames are pretty common among Surinamese with a Chinese ancestor.

 

As to the Chinese/Javanese angle: there is (and has been for a long time) a large community of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. As you know, Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony, and many of the contract workers (contractarbeiders I think the word is) that were recruited to work in Surinam after slavery was abolised were from this group. So I assume your grandfather was ethnic Chinese, spoke Chinese with his family, but was living on Java. And it's quite possible his family had been living there for many generations.

 

Many (perhaps most/all?) Indonesian Chinese spoke (or speak) Minnanese/Hokkien, so your grandfather's name would likely be a transcription of his name in Hokkien.

 

'Tjuk' is unfortunately not an official transcription, so it's difficult to know for sure what your grandfather's original surname was. Do you perhaps have any documents from him in which he wrote his name in Chinese? A letter, or an old passport or other ID? Or a letter from a relative? You can post a picture here and someone here will be able to read it.

[889]

This is from an old transliteration system once much used in Indonesia and the Straits Settlements.

 

In that system, Tjuk Tjauw Tjin seems to be the Hanyu Pinyin equivalent of Zhu Chao (Zhao?) Zhen. But the system seemed to have the occasional apostrophe in there as a marker, and that may have been lost over time in your name.

 

Chinese family names are traditionally just a single character, apart from a very few double-character ones. I don't know of any triple-character surnames (non-Han minorities excepted).

 

(Apart from the possible Java connection, there's the possibility that Dutch officials in Suriname were simply working from the same bureaucratic bible for transliterations as Dutch officials in Indonesia. I bet the book they worked from is somewhere in the Dutch archives.)

[Lu]

3 hours ago, 889 said:

Chinese family names are traditionally just a single character, apart from a very few double-character ones. I don't know of any triple-character surnames (non-Han minorities excepted).

Tjuk Tjauw Tjin would have been the person's full name: surname Tjuk, given name Tjauw-tjin. Many of such Surinamese-Chinese surnames have an A in the middle: Chin A Fo, Tjin A Lien.

[daryane tjuk]

My grandfather is 64 if I’m correct. What iknow is that my ancestor worked in Surinam back in 1860. I don’t have anything related to him. I don’t anything. My grandfather was born in Suriname just like many before him. So they don’t know or never even thought about it. I am really into this because I had a difficult time appreciating who I am and what I am. So I’m searching for answers. 
 

Tjuk Tjauw Tjin is way to long to be a Chinese surname. I even went and looked for files in the national archive of Suriname. I can’t find anything. 
 

my grandma is also Surinamese Chinese 

her last name is lie-kwie. It’s so different. Maybe Tjuk Tjauw Tjin is just a Javanese surname? 
 

[xinoxanu]

Very interesting topic, hoping you can find the answers you are looking for.

 

Considering that "the people of Suriname are among the most diverse in the world, spanning a multitude of ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups", doesn't the Suriname/Dutch governments have some sort of demographic institute that specializes on this? Perhaps you can contact them with your query?

 

Edit: General Bureau of Statistics of Suriname & Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute

 

[Lu]

On 6/6/2020 at 3:41 PM, daryane tjuk said:

Tjuk Tjauw Tjin is way to long to be a Chinese surname.

This is a Chinese name (at least it looks exactly like a Chinese name). The surname is Tjuk. Your ancestor's full name would have been Tjuk Tjauw Tjin. In Chinese, the surname ('achternaam') comes first, the given name ('voornaam') last. So your ancestor would have been Mr Tjuk, given name Tjauw Tjin. But he passed on the entire name, not just the surname.

[daryane tjuk]

I never heard the surname Tjuk ever before. If so how would you write'/spell it? I don't know what language they spoke? mandarin or perhaps hakka because i read that people from guigang (Thats where my ancestor came from) where Hakkanese people.

[889]

As I mentioned before, the definite answer as to what character "Tjuk" represented almost certainly lies in some document now located in a Dutch archive or library. I suspect though that you'll have to wait till Covid subsides to get much help from there.