Signature 10.jpg

Tue, 10/06/2020 - 06:28
Date picture taken
unknown

Comments

Most of these signatures remind me of the ugly Chinese words tattooed on the torsos of some lovely young lasses or Chinese words in some Hollywood movie props, i.e. They were done by people that do not have any fundamental knowledge of Chinese handwriting and were merely copying the strokes from some printed or written Chinese words, akin to me trying to copy something in Arabic or in Thai.

Excuse me, but these are the signatures of my 3rd great grandfather, who did have Chinese knowledge and did write in a way that showed that he knew at least some basics of Chinese calligraphy. He had become quite elderly in his later years so perhaps couldn't write as well, but I don't understand the intentions of your comment above.

I just called it the way I saw it. There were no other intentions.

But are you 100% sure that he did write those words?

In some of these, the right half of the left-most word was written as  instead of , a person with knowledge of Chinese words is unlikely to do this. The right word looks neither like  or , but  with an extra stroke on the right, again not something somebody that know the words would write, but something somebody that copied from a written word with a slight smudge on the right side would.

Addendum: Some people tend to add an extra elongated dot to the end of their signatures. If  was written as  and then an extra dot like this  , people that don't know the word may mistake the whole thing as one word and copy it as such.

I was not born in the late 1800s, so I myself cannot be 100% sure that he wrote those words (one would have to witness it personally to be 100% sure. But according to family history records and papers, yes, these were his signatures (multiple of them), so there is no reason to doubt it unless there is evidence to the contrary. I had uploaded these to discuss with other members on the forum who had responded a bit more politely and with more sensitivity.