Talk:Sunny Ang

Ang Soo Suan (洪书宣) was probably not Sunny Ang's birth name

I am not too sure about Wikipedia's stance towards original research, but after doing some of my own digging, I believe that Ang Soo Suan was not actually Sunny Ang's birth name as the article claims, but merely one of his aliases. His legal name was simply "Sunny Ang".

For example, his bankruptcy order from 1962, a year before the murder of Jenny Cheok, shows that his name was just "Sunny Ang", living at 8 Karikal Lane. (https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/straitstimes19621106-1.2.129.4?qt=%228%20karikal%20lane%22). This address later appears multiple times in articles covering Sunny Ang's trial, so we know that this is the same Sunny Ang. His name being written as just "Sunny Ang" suggests that this was his full legal name, without a Chinese name.

Another example would be the Cambridge School Certificate examination results for the year 1955. (https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/straitstimes19560306-1.2.56?qt=%22sunny%20ang%22). Under Victoria School, Sunny Ang's name can be found written as just "Sunny Ang" too. This suggests that the so-called "Soo Suan" part of his birth name was not in his legal name either.

Therefore, I propose the article be edited such that it says "Sunny Ang (c. 1939 – 6 February 1967), alias Ang Soo Suan or Anthony Ang".

As for the Chinese name for Sunny Ang, "洪书宣", the earliest known attestation of this name is from 27 April 1965 in a Nanyang Siang Pau article, which clearly indicates that it is "译音" (transliterated), corresponding to the English name "Ang Soo Suan" (https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/nysp19650427-1.2.24.2). However, given that Ang Soo Suan seems to be an alias that Sunny Ang came up with on his own, rather than his birth name, I don't think its derived Chinese transliteration should be considered as Sunny Ang's Chinese name.

Given this reason, I suggest that the other known Chinese name for Sunny Ang, "洪山尼", be included as well (one of the attestations can be found in this 2019 opinion piece from Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao: https://www.zaobao.com.sg/zlifestyle/columns/story20190419-949824).

In fact, I have some unconfirmed original research which suggests that Sunny Ang's Chinese surname was actually 汪, and "汪山尼" is attested in a lone article from 7 February 1967 by Sin Chew Jit Poh (https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/scjp19670207-1.2.16.3). Unfortunately, the news article does not write where it got this name from. Lycheekoala24 (talk) 20:52, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

@Lycheekoala24, I would actually remove all the Chinese names or make a note that that is not his real Chinese name. Since the articles mentioned that it is a translation based on pinyin. We should not make any assumption for his real Chinese name. For the rest of the article, only surname is needed, there is no need to mention his full name Sunny Ang, just Ang will do. ~ JASWE (talk) 09:05, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion, I have added the note accordingly Lycheekoala24 (talk) 09:31, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

@Lycheekoala24 Hi, I fixed the repetition of "Sunny Ang" to "Ang" already and also use the Template:Efn and Template:Notelist to set the note so it looks like a reference and readers can just click on the link. I taken the liberty to remove the transliteration of Sunny Ang (洪山尼) since the paper just used his English name to translate. Since it is not official, we can totally remove it. I am not sure of Anthony Ang but seems to be just one instance? Unless there are more instances of him being called Anthony Ang, then we can add back as an alias for him (with sources).

Thanks for the search and making the effort for all the notes here! I hope you can continue to contribute to Wikipedia, one way or another! Hope to see you around more often! ~ JASWE (talk) 10:03, 27 August 2025 (UTC)