Question Liu Kang's name order?

[TetsuoShima]

In Chinese naming convention the family name goes first. So at first glance one would assume that the family name is "Liu". This is an east Asian name that can be found in China. "Kang" is more commonly a Korean surname. It can be used as a Chinese family name, but is not seen very often as a given Chinese name.


In the Mortal Kombat comics Kang is clearly meant to be the family name, as all of Liu's family shares it

What are your thoughts on this? Should be noted that they are at least aware of the Chinese naming convention by MKX? This is in regards to Kung Jin and Kung Lao having the same family name.

 

[Pizza]

It's just a Westerner thing

 

[NoCharge]

It's fiction. So he could be named Cheese McBoobs for all I care lol

 

[Swindle]

I’m Asian.
It’s legit.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

They eventually followed it with Kung Lao and Kung Jin, but Liu being an orphan we haven't really seen anyone else in his family that I'm aware of

 

[Juxtapose]

They eventually followed it with Kung Lao and Kung Jin, but Liu being an orphan we haven't really seen anyone else in his family that I'm aware of

Yeah, in the official canon, we've never seen any family members of his, though his mother and father's names are mentioned canonically above.

It's long been accepted as a westernized over sight in the naming convention.

 

[Art Lean]

Well we don’t know anything about his family there, but if we take his primary influence (Bruce Lee) as inspiration it’s actually pretty accurate. Although Liu’s fighting persona is inspired by Bruce Lee, his real life contemporary of nearly the exact same age was actually Brandon Lee.

Lee Jun-Fan used ‘Bruce Lee’ as his westernised naming convention for marketing purposes, however his children Shannon and Brandon were both given western forenames with the surname Lee after their father’s stage name.

Their mother was an American named Linda, and on Liu’s bio there, his mother is named Lin too (which may very well just be short for Linda, hell I’ve known many Linda’s who’ve gone by Lin), so may be Western too and have wanted a western naming convention for the children.

So if we take the Lee family as its influence, it’s actually quite true to life in that instance.