Had a really interesting yet random convo about surnames at lunch today. In my late night travels I’ve done some wikipediaing and found out that my surname is ranked 20th in the top 100 list of Chinese common surnames as at 2006.

Not really sure how the Teochew ‘Neo’ of Liang came about, but Chinese surnames are an interesting bunch, as basically depending on the language the spelling and/or pronounciation may be different. E.g. Liang, Leung, Neo etc are all one and the same, which is why my Chinese name doesn’t have Neo but Liang instead.

And according to Wikipedia, Liang stands for “a beam”, “a bridge”, or “an elevation”… which then means if I translate my full Chinese name I get something like: An elevation autumn swallow…