Family Members in Penang Hokkien

Learn how various family members are called in Penang Hokkien, , using Taiji Romanisation. Compared to English, Penang Hokkien has a very complex way of addressing each member of the family. There is a specific term to call a person based on his station in reference to yourself.

Some of these terms correspond exactly to how you would address him, while at other times, you simply call the person "Ah3 + term". For people who are of the same generation as yourself, you often attach "Ko1" (male) or "Chee4" (female) to the person's name if he or she is older than you.

Generally, only people who are older than you, or at a higher station/generation, are called by the specific forms of address. Those who are younger than you are usually called by name.

To help you make sense of the various terms and forms of address, I have created the "Penang Hokkien Happy Family Chart". As this is quite large, I made it into a pdf file which you can open by clicking on the thumbnail.

Click the image below to open the PDF chart which you can enlarge

Family Members in Alphabetical Order

The following are the family members that appear in the above chart, listed here in alphabetical order along with the expected pronunciation using IPA symbols.

Family Members not shown in the chart

Numbering of Family Members

Family members are numbered according to age. The eldest is called tua3 while the youngest seh3 or seh1han3. Therefore, the paternal eldest uncle is tua3 pek3 followed by jee33 pek3, snar3 pek3 and so on. Once it crosses your father, the name changes from pek3 to cek3 but the numbering continues.

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Please use the information on this page as guidance only. The author endeavours to update the information on this page from time to time, but regrets any inaccuracies if there be any.

About this website

Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

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