Wong (surname)

Wong is the Cantonese romanization of two common Chinese surname; Huang (黃; literally "yellow") and Wang (王; literally "king").

The logograph for Wong / Huang consists of the radical characters for "twenty", "fires" and "fields," all representing the colour of these images combined.

As a result of late 17th to 18th century colonial activities, where English speaking colonists transcribed the family name as "Wong" in south China, we find this version of the family name following the migratory routes of the early migrant Chinese from this southern region to places such as Canada and the United States. As a result, one can often determine a multi-generational non-native Chinese person whose surname is Wong back to this historic artifact—usually as "Cantonese" Wong, inferring the fact that the person's ancestral heritage is from south China. To the Chinese mind, this colour relates to mother Earth. In fact, the Chinese character for Wong is based on parts that relate to this colour—in reviewing the derivative characters that form Wong , we see "Bright" (from the ancient form for the number twenty over the character for burning fires) + the character "farm fields" (square grid at center) inset between the characters "twenty" (the 'crown') and "fire" (two strokes at 'base').

The use of Wong (黃; pinyin: Huáng) as a surname started in 648 BC when the Huang Kingdom...
Read More