The relationship of the hyphen and the Chinese given name.

Customarily the Chinese name consists of three Chinese characters and the surname always comes first.   There are a few exceptions in Chinese surnames when there are more than one character such as "Seeto" or "O'Young".   The given name can be just one character or at the most, two characters.   In western countries the given name comes first, and the surname last, just the opposite to the chinese way of writing their names.

In the mid 19th century many chinese from economic reasons, went overseas to seek a better life.    When our forefathers landed in the foreign countries, such as Australia, their given names, because they were last were turned into surnames.   

In our own family there are for example the name CHUNG GON and BING SEE, during the fifties, some of the chinese in Hong Kong hyphenated their given names to save confusion.    The surname still went first and the given name was hyphenated and came after the surname,  not all Chinese followed such an arrangement, some left their given names as two seperate words.

In China, after the present government simplified Chinese characters the spelling of the chinese names have also changed.   All names are now based on the romanisation and pronunciation of the Mandarin Chinese called the Pin Yin system. 

The surname stands on its own as one character and the given name of the two characters is now joined into one  eg Ai-Lin is now written as Ailin.

The hythenated given names are the product of the time between the forties and after World War II, in the period of the chinese revolution of the fifties, the main reason that the two Chinese charaters were joined.  

Grandfather's name in Chinese is CHU KONG.   The character CHU can mean early in the morning, and the character KONG can mean a hole in the wall, but when the two characters are brought together to form as one name,  KONG  actually takes on another meaning ie Confucious and CHU in this case would mean respecting or worshipping Confucious, therefore his given name actually means ...a man following the principles of Confucious.

Now all chinese names are written in Pin Yin and given names are joined to become one word and pronounced according to it, excluding Hong Kong and Taiwan for the time being. 

Stephen Mar