Contributed by : Christopher Yuke Min Pung
1. How to write the Kam family name in Chinese
The family name 甘 has been written as “Kam” with the Latin alphabet. The symbol 甘 is the only true and correct way to write the name. The use of alphabets to represent 甘 is an attempt to match the pronunciation of the word with English letters and sounds. China also has various alphabets, they are just subordinate to the character system. The character system, a hieroglyphic system, is a core, if not the core, of Chinese civilization.
The concept of the character is a series of lines drawn in a specific order.
Picture of stroke order https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E7%94%98-order.gif
甘 can be written in various stylized ways just as English letters can come in various typefaces:
pictures of the modern form of “Kam” in two different typefaces
The Chinese government standardizes the modern character form. In fact the first national standardization of Chinese characters was done with the founding of the Chin dynasty, 2000 years ago; this was the beginning of the Chinese Imperial era.
There are older styles of writing Kam, which are still used for artistic purposes, that date back to before the Chin dynasty standardization:
oracle bone bronze
big seal small seal
The meaning of the word Kam, when it is not used as a surname, is “sweet”. The origin of Chinese characters are so ancient that they are often unknown or debatable, particularly for concepts. Some symbols like “tree” or “bird” or “mountain” are very obviously images of the object. When I look at the character for Kam, I see a tongue or maybe a piece of sugar cane, but that is complete speculation on my part.
If you do not study the Chinese language and just want to type the character or work with it on a computer, the symbol for Kam is unicode U+7518.
https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+7518
2. Why is 甘 written in Latin letters as “Kam”?
This question takes us down the deep path of explaining the Chinese language, and
linguistics in general.
甘 is often written as “gan” or “kam”. But “kam” can also represent another Chinese
character 金.
The simple fact is that Chinese characters represent words, but not sounds. The Chinese characters are a written language, not a spoken language. Imagine using emojis (which is a new and unofficial hieroglyphic character system). If you have a picture, or an emoji, of an apple, the English might speak “apple”, and the German might speak “apfel”, and the Italian would say “mela”, and the Chinese might say “ping-guo”. But they can all understand the picture of an apple, regardless of what sound they make to represent the picture.
Because the Chinese nation uses a hieroglyphic character system of writing, which does not correlate to the sound of the spoken language, there can be and are many different spoken languages or dialects of Chinese, (Cantonese, Mandarin, Shanghainese, etc., etc.). But there is only ONE mutually understood written language. In ancient times, China’s illiterate neighbors (Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc.) spoke languages completely unrelated to Chinese, but were all able to adopt Chinese characters to communicate while retaining their own spoken languages. For political reasons, most of the neighboring countries have reduced or stopped using Chinese characters; but a literate Chinese can still understand a lot of a Japanese newspaper which uses some Chinese characters, even though they do not speak Japanese.
So what about the alphabet? Alphabets are a “short term gain, long term loss” technology. Alphabets are easy to learn quickly, and spelling can be sloppy and non-standardized and still work. Whether you write “through” or “thru” you will be understood. In the short term alphabets beat hieroglyphics. But someone who does not understand your spoken language or dialect will not be able to interpret your writing. And spoken languages evolve quickly, especially without standardization. Can you read and understand Shakespeare or Chaucer? Can you understand all of what your kids are saying sometimes?
A speaker of Cantonese cannot understand a speaker of Mandarin, but they both understand each other when using written Chinese characters, and can both read a 2000- year-old Chinese document (but not know how it was pronounced back then). This is the great power of the Chinese culture. France, Italy and Spain once spoke Latin, but now have diverged into different unintelligible written and spoken languages. In my opinion, this is why Europe is a hornet’s nest of constantly warring neighbors while China is a single cohesive nation.
“Kam” is one approximation of a spoken word for 甘. Today, the standard spelling with Latin letters is “Gam” in Cantonese Chinese, “Gan” in Mandarin Chinese, “Cam” in Vietnamese, “Kam” in Korean and “Kan” in Japanese. - All dialectical variations in pronunciation. So we have to be careful about assigning a character to the name spelled “Kam”. And we need to remember the correct written Chinese word, rather than the ever- shifting spoken words.
An almost obvious job of the Kam Family Association is something as simple as remembering what our name actually is. We are not “Toby” (*reference to Alex Haley’s “Roots”).
Old bi-lingual gravestones in Hawaii record the surname in Chinese as well as the Romanization:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/225807232/char-ngun_shee-kam
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8622612/chong-kam
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/225807208/fo-look-kam
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/230775245/fo-shee-kam
About the author:
Christopher Yuke Min Pung 冯玉明, is a great-grandson of Elsie Kam, daughter of Mr. Siu “Akau” Kam and “Elsie” Sam Moi Ching who settled on the island of Kauai in the Kingdom of Hawaii in the 1880s. The descendants of the Siu Kam branch of the Kam family are active members of the Kams Society. Christopher lives in New York City, works in a medical laboratory, and has studied Chinese and genealogy as a hobby.
Contributed by Ernest Kam
Just sharing a few tidbits that have discovered. I found this video on the My China Roots website. It's from an interview with the LA Public Library (LAPL). I think that you might find it interesting in that you can access the My China Roots resources through some public libraries, ie LAPL. There is also online access available.
Genealogy Garage: Tracing Chinese Ancestors Using My China Roots--a Case Study
Genealogy Garage: Tracing Chinese Ancestors Using My China Roots--a Cas...