chau gong

Benjamin Barrett gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM
Wed Jul 2 17:23:45 UTC 2008


Does anyone know the origin of "chau" as in "chau gong"? The best I
can get is 鑔 (simplified 镲), which piny1yin1.com says is
pronounced as cha, tone 3. I found that character at http://
www.globem.com/trade/list/3724_6.html, which is only slightly better
than a wild guess. It seems possible that this is pronounced chau in
Cantonese or some other dialect, but I cannot find the character 鑔
in any dictionaries even to confirm the meaning. Gong itself
evidently comes from Malay (AHD) or Javanese (the Net), so chau might
not even be Chinese... BB

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