> I am afraid, your observations and conclusions are incorrect.
You say that, and then you go on to demonstrate that you have no idea what you're talking about.
It's quite true that the earlier waves of Chinese immigrants spoke Min and Yue languages. That is the reason I didn't use 周 Chow/Zhou as an example. Those aren't the same sounds.
But it's not at all true that Wong and Lee reflect different sounds than do Wang and Li. They are one and the same. Furthermore, the Mandarin pronunciation of the surname 魯 is not lü, it is lu.
If a Mandarin speaker surnamed 王 wanted to have their name pronounced as closely as possible by English speakers, they would spell it Wong -- just as the southerners named 王 (and 黄) actually did when they arrived in the 19th century, or as they actually did in Hong Kong under the British. The spelling Wang concerns itself with an "official spelling" at the expense of readers being able to pronounce the name -- which, if you'll notice, is exactly what I said up above.
You say that, and then you go on to demonstrate that you have no idea what you're talking about.
It's quite true that the earlier waves of Chinese immigrants spoke Min and Yue languages. That is the reason I didn't use 周 Chow/Zhou as an example. Those aren't the same sounds.
But it's not at all true that Wong and Lee reflect different sounds than do Wang and Li. They are one and the same. Furthermore, the Mandarin pronunciation of the surname 魯 is not lü, it is lu.
If a Mandarin speaker surnamed 王 wanted to have their name pronounced as closely as possible by English speakers, they would spell it Wong -- just as the southerners named 王 (and 黄) actually did when they arrived in the 19th century, or as they actually did in Hong Kong under the British. The spelling Wang concerns itself with an "official spelling" at the expense of readers being able to pronounce the name -- which, if you'll notice, is exactly what I said up above.