Hoklo people

Hoklo

Total population
Around 60 million (est. worldwide)
Regions with significant populations
Mainland China Fujian Guangdong Hainan Taiwan Majority of Taiwanese Hong Kong A minority population Macao A minority population Malaysia Largest group of Malaysian Chinese Singapore Largest group of Chinese Singaporeans Indonesia Largest group of Indonesian Chinese Myanmar One of the 3 largest groups of Burmese Chinese Philippines Majority of Chinese Filipinos
Languages
Hokkien dialect of Minnan and/or Mandarin. Diaspora also speak their respective home country's language(s)
Religion
Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, non-religion, small Christians and Muslim minority

Minnan-speaking areas in South China and Taiwan. Only the speakers of Quanzhou Zhangzhou (also known as Hokkien) are seen as Hoklos.

The Hoklo people or Hokkien people (endonym Hok-ló lâng, Hō-ló lâng, or Ho̍h-ló lâng) are Han Chinese people whose traditional ancestral homes are in southern Fujian of South China. They are also known by various endonyms (above), or other related terms such as Min-nan people (閩南人) or Hokkien Lang (福建人).

In narrower scope, the Hoklo people refers mainly to people who speak and use the Hokkien dialect of Min Nan Chinese spoken in southern Fujian, Taiwan, and by many overseas Chinese throughout Southeast Asia.

In wider scope, the Hoklo people can include speakers of other Min Nan languages, such as Zhongshan Min, Zhenan Min, Teochew dialect, and Hainanese.

Definition

In general, the Hoklo people can refer to one of the following:

Malaysia Hoklo or Malaysian Hokkien

Main article: Malaysian Chinese

The Hoklo or Hokkien make up one of the Malaysian Chinese groups. There are also Hokkien or Hoklo among the Chinese Indonesians.

Chinese characters for Hoklo

In Taiwan, there are three common ways to write Hoklo in Chinese characters (Min Nan pronunciations are given in POJ):

• 福佬 (Hok-ló; lit. "Fujian folk") – emphasizes their connection to Fujian province.
• 河洛 (Hô-lo̍k; lit. "Yellow River and Luo River") – emphasizes their purported long history originating from the area south of the Yellow River. This Han-character reading does not reflect the actual pronunciation in the southern-Chinese languages but only in Mandarin. It is likely a result of folk etymology.
• 鶴佬 (Ho̍h-ló; lit. "crane folk") – emphasizes the modern pronunciation of the characters (without regard to the meaning of the Chinese characters). This variant is used by the Chinese Wikipedia version of this article.

In Hakka, Hoklo may be written as 學老 (lit. "learned aged") and 學佬 (lit. "learned folk").

Despite many ways to write Hoklo in Chinese, many Taiwanese will use the term Hō-ló to refer to the language and Hoklo culture. The Taiwanese government recognizes the 河洛 variant (Hô-ló).

See also

• Demographics of Taiwan
• Taiwanese people
• Teochew people
• Hokkien dialect
• Hoklo (disambiguation)