Looi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Chinese: Spelling used in Malaysia and Singapore by descendants of migrants from Guangdong province
- Dutch: Friesland, Groningen, southern Netherlands
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Looi is a surname.
Like many other similarly-spelled surnames (Lui, Loi, Louie, etc.), it can originate from either of two Chinese surnames which are almost homophonous in Cantonese, though pronounced distinctly in Mandarin:
- Léi (雷), meaning "thunder" (Jyutping: Leoi4; Cantonese Yale: Lèuih). The spelling Looi might also originate from its pronunciation in various Southern Min dialects, e.g. Hokkien (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Lûi) or Chaoshan (Peng'im: Lui5).[1][2]
- Lǚ (呂), a toponymic surname from the ancient state of Lü (Jyutping: Leoi5; Cantonese Yale: Léuih; note the differing tone). The pronunciation in other varieties of Chinese is not similar to the surname meaning "thunder".[3]
As a Dutch surname, Looi originated both as shortened version of van de Looi with the tussenvoegsels dropped, and as a patronymic surname derived from the given name Looi. That given name is a regional hypocorism of various other given names: it may be short for Ludolf, or for Lodewijk in Groningen and the southern Netherlands, or for Eligius in Friesland. Alternative spellings include Looij.[4][5]
Statistics
In the Netherlands, there were nine people with the surname Looi and 35 people with the surname van de Looi as of 2007, up from three and nine respectively in 1947.[6][7]
