What's the (an) English translation of Chinese "wo fat?"

Factual Questions
1

OK, fans of the old TV program “Hawaii Five-O” will immediately recognize the name as that of Steve McGarrett’s evil arch-enemy–but, as I understand, the name was actually picked from the name of a Chinese restaurant in Honolulu. The fact that actor Khigh Dhiegh (born Kenneth Dickerson in New Jersey) caused McGarrett a lot of “woe” and was rather heavyset was just a neat coincidence. Possibly “Wo Fat” was the name of the entrepreneur, but I don’t know that. Also, without tone indications, or the original Chinese characters, a translation will be dicey at best.

So, with that little info, what are some of the reasonable translations of “wo fat?”

2

It’s problematic to begin with: modern Chinese names have three syllables; Wo Fat has only two.

Here are some English definitions for the syllable “wo” in Pinyan. There doesn’t appear to be a Chinese word that sounds like “fat”

3

Ah so?

Yeah, I know that’s really Japanese

4

This is incorrect. Chinese names of any age can also have 2 syllables or 4.

5

From my limited knowledge, it may be a Cantonese name. Cantonese is different from Mandarin Chinese, and can have words ending in “t”.

6

I was very surprised to learn that Khigh Dheigh has absolutely no Oriental ancestry. his stage name is apparently just a weird spelling of “K D”, his real initials. He;s part African.
Besides Wo Fat on Hawaii 5-0, he played a superb Judge Dee in the TV-movie Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders (directed by the King of TV Movies, Nicholas Meyer). It was supposed to be a pilot for a Judge dee TV series (like the one they had in Britain), but the studio wouldn’t pony up enough to pay for a costume drama. So they set it in modern times, with Dheigh as the lead, and it flopped.

One thing I love about the movie ids that all of the roles were played by Oriental actors, not European-ancestored actors in makeup. Except, ironically, as I much later learned, Judge Dee himself (Not Euro, but not Oriental, either.)

7

It’s spelled “Wo Fat”, but it’s pronounced “Sum Hung Guy”.

8

What about Yun Fat Chow? Where’d his name come from? Chow Yun-Fat - IMDb

9

Cantonese. There is no Fat in Mandarin. His name in Mandarin is Zhōu Rùnfā.

Anyway, I don’t know Cantonese, but searching around, I found this picture of the restaurant in question:

http://www2.flickr.com/photos/drdrewhonolulu/228086144/

Squinting reaaally hard, I can make out the first character. Searching a bit more, in most likeliness, the name is:

和發

Which means “peace” and “development/sending out” – “peace and prosperity” is given as a translation somewhere, as I’m not sure what sort of nuance the second character may have in Cantonese, I’ll leave it to other posters to shed light on this.

The proper romanization (using the Yale system) is wo4faat3. In Mandarin it comes out as “héfā”.

10

I’ve heard that there is a type of snobbery in modern Chinese and Vietnamese names towards fewer syllables. In the case of Vietnamese, this involves dropping the generic gender-specific names of “Thi” or “Van”, and it seems to be prevalent in folks under about forty. I don’t think I can give you a cite, other than what I’ve seen and been told.

Just to add, not “gender-specific” in the sense of “Mary” or “John”, but these names are almost like “Miss” or Mister", but are an actual component of the name rather than a title.

11

I knew his sister, Wun Hung Lo. I heard she got a boob job.