Anglicization of Canto surnames is a common practice in HK English language.
“Lee” is an English surname. In order to anglicize the surname 李, they first change the standard Canto “Lei” into the Mandarin “Li” and then spell “Li” as “Lee”.
“Law” is another English surname commonly adopted by the Cantonese. 羅 has a standard romanization as “Lo” in Canto. They simply adopt “Law” for the sake of anglicization.
Other common anglicized surnames include “Young” (instead of “Yang” or “Yeung”) for 楊, “Cook” (instead of “Kuk”) for 曲, “Louey” (instead of “Lui”) for 雷, etc.
We often jokingly refer to such anglicization as 扮鬼嚇人. Originally, the idiom means “to scare people by masquerading as a ghost”. For this context of anglicization, it means “to scare the Chinese people by putting on a foreign surname”.
“Lee” is an English surname. In order to anglicize the surname 李, they first change the standard Canto “Lei” into the Mandarin “Li” and then spell “Li” as “Lee”.
“Law” is another English surname commonly adopted by the Cantonese. 羅 has a standard romanization as “Lo” in Canto. They simply adopt “Law” for the sake of anglicization.
Other common anglicized surnames include “Young” (instead of “Yang” or “Yeung”) for 楊, “Cook” (instead of “Kuk”) for 曲, “Louey” (instead of “Lui”) for 雷, etc.
We often jokingly refer to such anglicization as 扮鬼嚇人. Originally, the idiom means “to scare people by masquerading as a ghost”. For this context of anglicization, it means “to scare the Chinese people by putting on a foreign surname”.