"At a meeting of the advertising Club of China held on Wednesday two interesting papers on hong names were read.
The first of these, which was on Chinese hong names, was by Mr. S. D. Pan, 3a, psc. He said that out of thousands of characters in Chinese language only 100 to 200 were commonly used as hong names. Nearly all of them were what were called in English language adjectives, adverbs and abstract nouns. He had tried to make a list of those characters commonly used as trade names, and had found 16 in number. Yhose were all of good meaning expressing the hope and wish of the proprietors.
The speaker then dealt with types of names in detail, showing the particular use attaching to them, and he proceeded The meaning of the characters selected is to express the hope or wish of the owners. Surnames are used when the shop belongs to one person or one family, hut there are exceptions to this rule. Suifixes vary with the business concerned Words of similar pronunciations are chiefly used for the purpose of imitations. Common names are used unrestrictedly by those doing the same kind of business. Some characters are. specialized for some particular business,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.