Hoklo People - Chinese Characters For Hoklo

Chinese Characters For Hoklo

In Taiwan, there are three common ways to write Hoklo in Chinese characters (Min Nan pronunciations are given in POJ):

• 福佬 (Hok-ló; lit. "Fujian person") – emphasizes their connection to Fujian province.
• 河洛 (Hô-lo̍k; lit. "Yellow River and Luo River") – emphasizes their purported long history originating from the area south of the Yellow River. This Han-character reading does not reflect the actual pronunciation in the southern-Chinese languages but only in Mandarin. It is likely a result of folk etymology.
• 鶴佬 (Ho̍h-ló; lit. "crane person") – emphasizes the modern pronunciation of the characters (without regard to the meaning of the Chinese characters). This variant is used by the Chinese Wikipedia version of this article.

In Hakka, Hoklo may be written as 學老 (lit. "knowledge aged") and 學佬 (lit. "knowledge person").

Despite many ways to write Hoklo in Chinese, many Taiwanese will use the term Hō-ló to refer to the language and Hoklo culture. The Taiwanese government recognizes the 河洛 variant (Hô-ló).