Friday, August 2, 2013

Geneology, or I looked at The Hundred Family Surnames and blinked.

TIL that the Hundred Family Surnames is a real thing, not just a concept.

So of course I looked for Yee. Which, in Mandarin, is Yu. (Yee is Toisanese.)
But I don't know how to alphabetize in Chinese.1
And there are a lot of ways to write Yu.
Wiki had a list of 25 different characters that are pronounced "Yu": 余, 于, 魚, 鱼, 漁, 渔, 楀, 柳, 劉, 刘, 俞, 喻, 兪, 於, 遇, 虞, 郁, 尉, 禹, 游, 尤, 庾, 娛, 娱, and 茹. Within that, they highlighted eleven.
Our family writes it, 余.
Which evidently is the 90th name in the book of 100 Family Surnames.
Yee

1 As interesting as the Parade of Nations2 always is, one uniqueness of the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing 2008 was that, until announced (posted onscreen), I never had a handle on which countries were coming up. And that's setting aside political quirks like Taiwan being separate from China, but how separate depends on whose government you ask.
2 One Winter Games, Big Frog and I were watching the Opening Ceremonies with a group of friends, and Earl and another sound tech from our church decided that they were going to seize the opportunity to become the Mexican bobsled team. Build your bucket list!




PS TIL Yee is also in the Urban Dictionary. Evidently Yee is ebonics for "Hooray!"

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