In this book of The Chiu Lut Sau Memoirs – A Compendium of His Life’s Transforming Journeys as a Young Villager from Southern China, we have devoted Chapter 3 on the question of why “Chiu”, “Zhao”, “Chew” come in different spellings? And Chiu, as the “First Surname” is featured in the Famous Hundred Family Surnames, as well as the New Hundred Family Surnames. This question often arises thus confusing Westerners, with other surnames such as Chan, Lee, Cheung, Wong, Ho, and Lum, etc., that are also written as Chen, Li, Jiang, Wang, He and Lin, and Lam in the same written Chinese language. Even among Chinese now since the adoption of the Mandarin dialect as the official dialect, and script as the lingua franca since the 14th century for government officials and the courts. Nonetheless, the written Chinese words or hieroglyphs remain the same in the traditional script, and not the simplified script.

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