A recent search on Facebook shows that there are over 7,000 people with Quach somewhere in their name. Looking through the various Quach groups on facebook, I’ve come to find out that I’m not alone in wondering just where do I fit in.
All the Quachs I’ve met in San Francisco have similar backgrounds, born in San Francisco, parents are from Vietnam. The differences among the group is the language they speak. I’ve met some who speak a dialect of Chinese called, TeoChew and Vietnamese, while others grew up with only Vietnamese as their primary language. All the relatives in my family can speak both languages fluently but can only read and write in Vietnamese.
When I asked my mom if we were Chinese or Vietnamese, she would always tell me to tell everyone else we’re Vietnamese. The only problem was that I never learned Vietnamese from my parents or even learned much of TeoChew from them. Things get awkward when I meet other Quachs and they begin to speak to me in either Vietnamese or TeoChew and all I can reply is that I never learned the language.
I never even knew how to spell out the name of the language I grew up learning until a few years ago when I found the Facebook group called, “Quach is better than your Last Name” and found out that TeoChew is the official name. My family pronounces it “Chew Chao” which is also known as Chaozhou, located in Eastern China.
Image from the Facebook group 郭 family (Guo, Kwak, Kwok, Quach, Kaku, 곽)
For the family name of Quach, it turns out it has different spelling and pronunciation depending on the country but maintains the same character of 郭. In Mandarian, the character is Guo, Cantonese it is Kwok, and Vietnamese is Quach. In my family, we pronounce all the letters in the name. It sounds almost like “crouch” (a nickname some kids would give me in school) as the “ch” in the name are not silent. Another version I’ve heard makes Quach sound like “Kwok” which I guess is the more mainstream version as every teacher I’ve ran into pronounces my name as “Kwok.”
I’ve figure that if anyone asks where my family is from, I’ll just tell them I’m Vietnamese that speaks a dialect of Chinese. I have relatives in California, Texas, New York, Germany, and the rest in Vietnam, but none that I know of from China as all the family my parents have grew up in Vietnam. My ancestors probably did come from China but seeing as how most of my relatives live in Vietnam all their lives, I say it’s safe to say I must have some Vietnamese blood in me.
