Queens Park

Life’s Activities

How to read a Chinese Headstone

While we were all in recording the headstones at Queens Park, there was a gentleman in with his crew working on a headstone of a Chinese Couple’s headstone.  Wendy was chatting with him and the question about how to read Chinese headstone came up.  Either Wendy nor I thought of recording his explanation, which was very good.  He did a very detailed about explanation about the positioning of the characters, about naming and spelling as well as whether the family was from the north or south (or maybe east and west) and down to even the birthdays; the Chinese characters will have the true date of birth but the english will have been changed due to entering Canada. 

I found a very simple explanation of how to read a Chinese’s headstone:  “To read a Chinese Headstone, look for the deceased’ name in the centre column, usually family name first, with dates and birthplace often on the right (east) and death on the left (west), reading top-to-bottom, right-to-left; identify key characters like 氏 (maiden name), 門 (married name), 公 (Mr.), or 邑 (district).”

If I remember correctly sometimes there are parents names as well as children’s names.  I found a bit of a write up on “My China Roots” that was a good read with good information. 

https://www.mychinaroots.com/blog/genealogy/how-to-read-chinese-tombstones-without-reading-chinese/