Chop translation

[asterroc]

I have a Chinese chop, in traditional characters. It is possible that it contains my name in Chinese (Szu Sung-Eh), or it could be something else entirely ("licensed prostitute"). I can no longer write my Chinese name, but I think I would recognize it if hand written, and certainly the last symbol doesn't look like anything I recognize (that and my name is three parts, not four).

Below the cut are images of the stamp/print, and the chop itself. Click for bigger.


Print


Chop (since it is a stamp, it is backwards of how it prints)



If you know what it says, please enlighten me.

Edit: A mirror image of the chop and further discussion can be found here.

Comments

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

I have asked two coworkers who are native chinese readers. One has already told me that he can't tell what it says, if anything.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks for the effort! :) Do they know, is this traditional Chinese, or some other stylized or historical Chinese? It certainly doesn't look like simplified Chinese to me.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

My guess would be simplified Chinese, but my Mandarin, such as it was, is about 25 years (urk!) stale at this point. I could maybe ask a couple of friends at work.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

One coworker said "I will have to puzzle that out. It is in an old font that they use for chops. I don't have time right now, I am working on $REALJOB I will have to trace the stamp and reverse it, the image isn't too clear."

I traced and mirrored the chop for him, lets see what he says.

Traced Chop

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I haven't gotten the chance yet to dig out my image manipulation software and just mirror image the original chop itself. That might be more readable than a mirror image of a tracing.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

So I asked one of my friends at work, who grew up in mainland China. To her it looks like these characters are very old; they're not using the standard components. (E.g. the character in the lower right, the bottom-right component in the character in the upper right, the top component in the character in the bottom left.)

Based on that (and on the similar comment above), you may have to go to an actual scholar of historical Chinese writing in order to get anywhere with this. If you do, I'd be interested in finding out what you learn.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've emailed another friend whose mother usually manages to puzzle out the most obscure things, so maybe they'll pipe up here or if not I'll post it if they email me back. She's not a scholar though, just highly literate, so it may be she doesn't know either, and I'll have to keep hunting.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

You have apparently presented an interesting challenge to my friend. The character set is "old man", a very old style. And it is poorly drawn, some of the characters are sideways.

The last character is basically just means "this is a chop".

The first three might be a transcription (in the linguistic sense) of your name in English with similar sounding words in Mandarin. Is your name something like "Suzanne"? But as a Mandarin phrase it seems to mean nothing.

He is still trying to puzzle it out.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Interesting! It may actually be a transliteration of my Chinese (Shanghai) name into "old man". I prefer to write my Chinese name in English as "Su Sung-Eh", but another possible English transliteration of it might be "Tsu Zong-Ah". (I do not actually know any of the official accepted ways of writing Chinese words in English, so I'm just going based upon what they sound like to me.) Point is, my actual Chinese name may be consistent with the "Suzanne" you mention this chop as apparently sounding like phonetically. (Suzanne is not my actual name.) The "Su/Tsu" is a transliteration into Shanghai of my actual family name (the name is Jewish in origin), and the "Sung-Eh" or "Zong-Ah" is Shanghai for "heart and liver (literal) / heart and soul (figurative)". It is my understanding that Shanghai is very similar to Mandarin.

Please pass this on to your friend in case it helps. I'm glad he's enjoying the challenge. :)