Who gave Sherlock Holmes a 'lucky' Chinese name?

The mystery of who gave Sherlock Holmes his Chinese name would have proven a conundrum even for the famous detective himself. Pronounced Fu’ermosi (福尔摩斯) in Chinese, this transcription of “Holmes” follows current conventions, with one notable exception: the initial phoneme fu (福), meaning “good fortune/luck.” One widespread theory why points to Lin Shu, a renowned translator of Western literature and Fujian native, since in his local dialect “f” is pronounced with an “h” sound. Case solved? To quote Sherlock Holmes, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

Ti Gong

The evolution of Holmes’ Chinese name

A 2015 article in the Beijing Evening News begins to shed some light on this question. According to the author, Jiang Baojun, Lin Shu was not the first person to transcribe “Holmes” as Fu’ermosi, nor was he the most prolific translator of the Sherlock Holmes series into Chinese.

Although a prolific translator, Lin Shu only translated one story from the Sherlock Holmes series. In his 1908 translation of A Study in Scarlet, written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, Lin Shu and Wei Yi transcribed “Sherlock Holmes” as Xieluoke Fu’ermosi (歇洛克•福尔摩斯). While the standard pronunciation of fu (福) in Mandarin sounds nothing like the first syllable of “Holmes” in English, in Lin’s local Fuzhou dialect the character would have been pronounced with an “h” sound, much like English. However, there is just one problem with this theory: Fu’ermosi had already become the standard Chinese surname of the famous detective several years before Lin Shu’s translation was published.

Chang Dali details the evolution of Holmes’ Chinese name in his 2014 book, A Brief Account of the World’s Detective Novels:

Two translators from Shanghai

Huang Ding and Zhang Zaixin were the first to give Holmes a Chinese name beginning with the character fu (福). So who were they and where were they from?

The Chronicles of Nanyang College–Jiaotong University: 1896-1949, published by Shaanxi People’s Publishing House in 2002, includes Zhang Zaixin in a catalogue of students enrolled in 1897, and his birthplace is listed as “Shanghai.”

Historical records often mention Huang Ding alongside Zhang Zaixin, but provide few details about the two translators’ biographies. Guo Yanli’s 1996 article, “A Brief Account of Modern Chinese Translations of Detective Novels,” states that Huang and Zhang began translating Sherlock Holmes stories in 1901, and a collection of their translations was republished in 1902 under a different title. According to Guo, “the chief translator was Huang Ding, who once studied in the US and had perfect command of the English language, so his translations are quite faithful to the original texts.”

Following this clue, the journalist Jiang Baojun made further investigations, concluding that Huang Ding is most likely the same person as Huang Zuoting, the first student from China to attend University of Virginia, where he went by the name, Theodore Wong.

This was confirmed by Justin O’Jack, Chief Representative of the University of Virginia China Office: “There are several primary sources that show Huang Ding (or Theodore Ting Wong) and Huang Zuoting (or Tso-ting Wong) are one and the same. For example, the entry for Huang Ding in Who’s Who of American Returned Students, published by Tsing Hua College in 1917, gives his courtesy name as Zuoting and his English name as T. T. Wong. So we can be certain that Huang Ding and Huang Zuoting are the same person, namely Theodore Wong.”

O’Jack went on to explain that Theodore Wong attended UVA from 1894 to 1896, for two and a half academic years, leaving after the fall term of his second year without a B.A. degree, but emphasized “in the early days of the University, few students took undergraduate degrees; most studied for ‘diplomas’ in various subjects, which were like certificates for finishing a course of study.”

O’Jack elaborated, “Although international students have attended UVA since its first session in 1825, by the time Wong arrived at the University nearly 70 years later, only 25 other international students had preceded him. In the 1894-95 academic year - his first year at UVA - Wong was one of only four international students, and the only student from Asia. He studied Greek, Historical Science, English Literature, Philosophy, Political Economy, and Chemistry, among other subjects.”

Archival records show that Theodore Ting Wong was born in Shanghai on June 26, 1876. Does this mean that the origin of Fu’ermosi for “Holmes” has nothing to do with Fujian dialect? Well, not necessarily. Wong’s family in fact hailed from Fujian.

Blessed with luck

O’Jack, who has done extensive research on Theodore Wong and his family, says that Wong’s father, Rev. Kong Chai Wong, was born in Amoy (Xiamen, Fujian Province) and relocated to Shanghai in 1845, when he was still a teenager.

Did Rev. Wong and his son converse in Amoy dialect? To what degree would Theodore Wong have adopted his father’s accent, having been born and educated in Shanghai? It may be impossible to know for certain, but it seems unlikely to be the explanation.

In fact, some regional variations of Shanghai vernacular also pronounce fu (福) with an “h” sound, although only a minority of elderly residents in rural areas of Shanghai do so today. According to Professor Qian Nairong, an influential Chinese linguist specializing in the history of dialects in the Shanghai area, “in traditional Shanghainese fu is pronounced like ho, and even today elderly residents in Fengxian District pronounce Fengxian in the old dialect as Hongxian, and feng (wind) is still pronounced as hong” in some outer districts of Shanghai.

In 1902, just one year after Huang Ding coined the name Fu’ermosi (福而摩司), Shanghai Civilization Books started using the transcription Fu’ermosi (福尔摩斯) – with identical pronunciation but different characters for the second and fourth syllables. This Chinese name for Sherlock Holmes has been used consistently ever since, demonstrating that the name beginning with the character fu was widely accepted in Shanghai by this time. So it is more likely that traditional Shanghainese influenced Huang Ding’s transcription choices more than Amoy dialect would have, but this too may be too simplistic of an answer to our initial conundrum.

Transcription of foreign names into Chinese has a history as long as it is varied, where foreign loanwords have been rendered into Chinese through various means, including translation and transliteration, and sometimes through phono-semantic matching, reflecting both the sound and meaning of the original term.

In Jiang Baojun’s view, Huang Ding’s choice of characters was likely deliberate rather than unintentional. He illustrates his point with a contemporary example of how the British rock band, The Beatles, is transcribed into Chinese. The group’s Chinese name, Pitoushi (披头士), loosely corresponds to the sounds of the name in English, with the exception of the first character pi (披). Although the group’s English name begins with a “b” instead of a “p” sound, the first character pi, meaning “draped over one’s shoulders,” and the first two characters pitou (披头), a word meaning “with hair disheveled or in disarray,” vividly reflect the singers’ signature haircuts. It would be presumptuous to assume that this transcription is a result of the translator’s failure to distinguish between the voiced and unvoiced consonants “b” and “p.” As Jiang asks rhetorically, “Could not Huang Ding have applied a similar strategy to his transcription of ‘Holmes,’ considering how the detective always solves the crime in the end, perhaps blessed with just a bit of ‘luck’？”

Influencing a generation of Chinese

Huang Ding and Zhang Zaixin were an exceptional translation team. Together they made a number of English masterpieces accessible to Chinese readers. It is fair to say they played an important role in helping their compatriots to broaden their horizons and gain a better understanding of the world. Both Huang and Zhang were members of the Shansi University Translation Department, founded in Shanghai in 1902 by the British missionary, Timothy Richard.

During the span of six years from 1902 to 1908, Huang Ding and Zhang Zaixin were among a dozen Chinese translators who published 23 foreign language classics and textbooks for secondary and higher education, including titles such as Evolution by Edward Clodd, The Twentieth Century Atlas of Popular Astronomy by Thomas Heath, Atlas of Physical Geography by Alexander Keith Johnston, and One Thousand Biographies Selected from Chambers Biographical Dictionary.

Huang and Zhang also translated A General History for College and High-Schools by P. V. N. Myers, or Myers’ General History for short, with Zhang transcribing into written Chinese what Wong interpreted orally. In the preface of the book, Zhang wrote: “When the well-respected British missionary, Timothy Richard, started running Shansi University, this was the first book he recommended. It is translated by Huang and myself, for schools and educational facilities of our country.”

Highly regarded in its time, Myers’ General History was written by the American historian, Philip Van Ness Myers, in 1890. The comprehensive tome was also very influential in China during the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican period. The book was said to have changed a generation of Chinese people, including the famous writer Mao Dun, and this 1905 Chinese translation by Huang Ding and Zhang Zaixin, published by the Shansi University Translation Department, was very well received. One well-known scholar, Xia Zengyou, was among the editorial team and helped polish the text, and another scholar, Zhang Chunnian, noted the translators of this book first coined the Chinese term, Wenyifuxing, which became the standard translation for “The Renaissance.”

The Wongs’ ties with America

Theodore Wong graduated from St. John’s College, which was established by American missionaries in Shanghai, before he went to further his studies in the US in the last decade of the 19th century. Wong entered the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia in 1892, prior to matriculating to University of Virginia in 1894. According to his classmate and good friend at UVA, Edmund Jennings Lee, Wong “made an excellent record and was greatly liked by both students and faculty. Here he laid the foundation of his remarkable knowledge of English, which he spoke with purity and discrimination and wrote so perfectly that it could not be detected that he was a foreigner.” Rev. Edmund J. Lee later came to China himself and served as a missionary in Anqing, Anhui Province.

O’Jack revealed that throughout Theodore Wong’s time at UVA, he was an active member of the Episcopal High School Club at the university. “In his final year at the University, Wong lived in a private room at 49 West Lawn, in the heart of the ‘Academical Village,’ the historical center of the University that was designed by our founder, Thomas Jefferson, in 1814. Wong lived in a part of the West Lawn known as ‘Bachelors Row,’ where the rooms are smaller than other Lawn rooms and were typically single occupancy. Since at least the last half of the 20th century, being selected to live on the Lawn is one of the greatest honors for an undergraduate student at UVA. Residents, known as ‘Lawnies,’ are selected by a committee of student leaders chaired by the Dean of Students, based on criteria of academic success, leadership and service to the University community.”

The Wong family’s ties with America predate Theodore Wong by nearly five decades, beginning with his father, Kong Chai Wong (1827-1886).

After the First Opium War, China was forced to open five coastal ports for commerce, and soon after the American Episcopal Church sent a missionary from South Carolina, William Jones Boone, to the port of Amoy (Xiamen, Fujian Province). Fifteen-year-old Kong Chai Wong first worked as a houseboy for the Boone family. Boone had graduated from the Virginia Theological Seminary, which is affiliated and next to the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, where Theodore Wong would later study. Most likely this is one reason why Kong Chai Wong later sent his son to study in Virginia.

In 1843, on his first return trip home from Asia, Boone brought Kong Chai Wong along with him, making Wong’s trip to the US five years earlier than Yung Wing, considered China’s first student in the US. Kong Chai Wong spoke fluent English, but there is no record of him attending school in America. In December 1844, Wong left the US with Boone and returned to China.

On Easter 1846, 19-year-old Kong Chai Wong was baptized by Boone and became the first Chinese disciple of the Episcopal Church in China. That same year, Boone formed the American Episcopal School for Boys at the Wong Family Pier in Hongkou, Shanghai with Kong Chai Wong as his principal aide. In September 1851, Kong Chai Wong became the first Chinese deacon of the Episcopal Church in China. In 1853, Boone established the second Episcopal Church in Shanghai, the Church of Our Savior, in Hongkou. Kong Chai Wong presided over Chinese services at this church for 35 years. In 1863, Wong became the first Chinese priest in equal standing with his Western counterparts.

Kong Chai Wong’s wife was the first woman from the first women’s boarding school in Shanghai, the Emma Jones’ Girls’ School established by the Episcopal Church, to be baptized in China. They had 10 children, but only five girls and one son grew to adulthood. In June 1881, their eldest daughter, Soo-Ngoo Wong, was appointed the inaugural principal of St. Mary’s Hall, which united the Emma Jones and another boarding school for girls in Shanghai. On August 23, 1888, she married American missionary Francis Lister Hawks Pott, president of St. John’s College. Her brother, Theodore Wong, was Kong Chai Wong’s youngest son.

Upon his return from the US in January 1897, Theodore Wong began teaching at his alma mater, St. John’s College, in Shanghai. In 1900, he cofounded the alumni association of St. John’s College. That same year, he helped to establish the Shanghai YMCA, along with his family friend, W. W. Yen, who followed him both at Episcopal High School and at University of Virginia.

Theodore Wong maintained a strong passion for education. In 1902, he authored, Chronological Tables of the Chinese Dynasties (from the Chow Dynasty to the Ch’ing Dynasty), edited by Prof. E. R. Lyman and published by Shansi University in 1902, under the direction of Timothy Richard. In 1905, he co-edited with W. W. Yen the English and Chinese Dictionary, which is comprised of 40,000 words and phrases and was of great academic value.

“Weiching Williams Yen (or Yan Huiqing) was the first student from China to earn a degree from UVA and the first international student to graduate with a B.A. degree from the University,” O’Jack said. Two of the earliest Chinese students at University of Virginia made the best use of what they learned in America and devoted themselves to improving English learning and knowledge about the West in their motherland.

Theodore Wong’s wife, Julia Sih (Xue Pa) was born to an affluent family in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, and was one of the first seven graduates of the McTyeire School for Girls. Sih and Wong had five daughters and two sons, though only four of the daughters grew to adulthood.

With a government career in mind, Theodore Wong took the civil service exam and was awarded the highest and final degree of Jinshi, and thereafter was called Dr. Wong. In 1909, he entered public service, managing the newly established Shanghai-Nanjing Railroad. In 1911, he was appointed to Washington, D.C. as Director of the Chinese Educational Mission in the US. In 1916, this program began accepting female students, and Julia Sih brought the first batch of 10 women to study in America. That same year, Dr. Theodore Wong was awarded the Order of Golden Grain (Jiahe xunzhang) by China’s then ruling government.

Tragically, his promising career was cut short. On the night of January 29, 1919, Theodore Wong and his two colleagues were shot and killed at the Chinese Educational Mission office in Washington. It became a high-profile case drawing nationwide attention in the US. Although the real culprit was never convicted, the trial left an important legacy in American criminal justice, serving as legal precedent several decades later for Miranda v. Arizona.

The March 1919 edition of The Chinese Students’ Monthly (vol. XIV, no. 5) published a special editorial in memory of the late Director T. T. Wong, recalling, “As a man Mr. Wong was pronounced by all those who knew him as a ‘perfect gentleman,’ embodying in him all the virtues which that name signifies. He was a man of sterling character and yet of pleasing personality. To see him was to respect him and to know him was to love him,” noting “in counsel he was to his students as a wise father; in help he was to them a true friend.”

According to an article in Shanghai News (Shen bao) on March 8, 1920, Theodore Wong’s coffin, which “was of the highest American standards” was not returned to China until February 14th of that year. With apparent surprise, the newspaper reported that newly invented chemicals from America had prevented Wong’s body from decaying, even a year after his death, so he was able to have an open-casket funeral service in Shanghai. On March 7, family and friends hosted a grand funeral for Theodore Wong at the Church of Our Savior, with over 700 people in attendance. The church bell was rung 45 times, symbolizing his age when he died. After the church service, the mourners followed a dozen pallbearers carrying his coffin in procession to the Bubbling Well Road cemetery, where the burial service was led by Wong’s brother-in-law, Rev. Francis Lister Hawks Pott.

Theodore Wong led a thrifty and honest life, leaving his family with little except for their house. Julia Sih had to sell the old house and purchase a new one at 675 Hart Road (now Changde Road in Jing’an District), only then to take out a mortgage on the new house, which she also used as classrooms for Wong’s Academy for Girls, founded in honor of her late husband’s dedication to education.

Julia Sih also made sure that all her surviving six children benefited from an overseas education. For example, her eldest daughter, Helen Wong, studied at the University of Michigan, as the seventh woman to receive the prestigious Barbour Scholarship, designed to prepare Asian women as leaders in their home countries. Her third daughter, Dorothy Wong, received a B.A. from the University of Chicago, and went to Columbia University for her Master’s in education. Her fourth daughter, Grace Wong, studied at Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory of Music.

Her eldest son, Theodore Kai Ping Wong, graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts, and later joined W. W. Yen in a diplomatic career, once serving as Counselor at the Chinese Legation in Washington. Her second son, Wilfred Sien-ning Wong, worked for the R&D division of the General Motors headquarters in Detroit, and later became a successful businessman and philanthropist devoted to education, serving five years as Chairman of the Chung Chi College Board of Trustees for The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Dorothy, Grace and Theodore K.P. Wong all taught at the school founded by their mother, Wong’s Academy for Girls, after returning from their studies in America, passing along the values of education through another generation in the Wong family.

This article was translated by Ye Jun and edited by Justin O’Jack.