Common Chinese Surnames in Penang

Common Chinese Surnames in Penang

Here's a list of some of the more common Chinese surnames that you can find in Penang, along with the IPA symbols and audio when pronouncing the surnames in English. As you can see below, most surnames are pronounced in the fourth tone when spoken in English. Often the same surname in Chinese character may be spelled variously depending on whether the person is Hokkien, Cantonese, or is spelling his surname in Mandarin.

There is naturally more surnames than I have listed below. I often do not repeat surnames that are very closely related, i.e. Teo and Teoh. The audio provided is how you would pronounce these surname in English. You will notice that in English, all monosyllibic surnames take the fourth tone. This is the tone to use when referring to someone in English.

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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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