Much confusion is present on the internet about his name, therefore we would like to explain once and for all what the true explanation is, which has never been done before because the collected specifics were not known yet.
Born in Hong Kong, Wang Kiu was given the characters 王喬 by his parents.
These characters are phonetically pronounced by a Cantonese speaking Chinese as: WONG KIU; and by a Mandarin speaking Chinese as: WANG KIU.
Wang Kiu only obtained a western translation of his name on paper of the characters 王喬, when he started to work for the “Road Works Council” of the British government in 1949.
Chinese characters were not accepted by the British government, and for this reason the Chinese characters were translated to western writing. During the translating of his name the western characters WANG were chosen. The reason for this was that at that time, the Mandarin pronunciation of “Wang” was one which was used in the upper classes of Hong Kong society. Since that time Wang Kiu has been (phonetically) addressed as Wang Kiu and as such is the only correct pronunciation.
It was also mandatory to add a British name to your official name. Joseph was the name chosen.
As Wang Kiu did not have a birth certificate he used his slightly older (deceased) brother’s birth certificate during the registration process of his name with the government. For this reason Wang Kiu’s true birth date has never become known.
From the time of the above mentioned registration onwards, Wang Kiu was in the possession of a real passport. The names which were therefore mentioned on this document were: Wang, Joseph Kiu with the birth date August 15th 1923.
Wang Kiu died in his residence in the Hague, after being ill for a short while, on the 13th of May 2009 in the presence of his family and his third wife Ping Liu. Wang Kiu became 86 years of age, based on the birth date of his slightly older brother.