Wing Chun or Ving Chun or Yong Chun or Eng Chun or Ving Tsun or Wing Tsun

[Awatea Piripi Edwin]

Wing Chun or Ving Chun?

As if it wasn’t hard enough to learn a martial art and remember all the terms and names for the relevant techniques and ideas encompassed in it. It can seem even more daunting when you find a myriad of spellings of these words let alone the name of the martial art itself.

So we have Wing Chun Kuen, Ving Chun Kuen, Wing Tsun Kuen, Yong Chun Chuan, and Eng Chun Cun and on it goes.

Which is the correct spelling and pronunciation of our beloved martial art?

The answer is actually – all of the above.

But how can this be?

Okay so let me elaborate here. It all comes down to the complex nature of spoken language in the vast Chinese landscape. China is a very large place and is actually made up of many different ethnic groups of people. And although there is a single written language used across these groups and an official national language (Mandarin) the reality is that there are almost as many spoken languages as there are ethnic groups. Adding to this is a lack of a single standard method of writing these languages in western alphabetical script.

So although Mandarin is the recognised language of China it is far from being the standard spoken language, particularly in the south. Another major language, spoken in the southern parts of China, is Cantonese. This language has been the main language spoken in places such as Guangzhou and Hong Kong and has therefore influenced the southern systems of Chinese martial arts. So the art we practice though in Mandarin would be (approximately) said – Yong Chun Chuan is in fact pronounced in Hong Kong as Wing Chun Kuen. Now add to this the lack of a standardised English spelling of Cantonese words (there are several popular methods) then various masters chose different renderings to approximate the sounds of their dialectical spoken term. Hence grandmaster Yip Man (Ip Man) chose Ving Chun Kuen as his preferred spelling.

Several of his students followed suit while others used alternative spellings when they moved to the west – such as Ving Chun Kuen and Wing Chun Kuen.
Bruce Lee was an early user of the term Wing Chun Kuen and Tsoi Siu Kwong (my own Grandmaster) used Ving Chun Kuen.

Other lineages have also spelt their names based on their own dialects and languages – Black Flag Wing Chun Kuen for instance prefer to use Eng Chun Cun and Hung Fa Yi Wing Chun Kuen sometimes use Weng Chun Kuen. (this term also denotes a difference in the lineage of Wing Chun/Weng Chun also – one character is written with the meaning of eternal or forever and is often written in western script as Weng, while the most familiar character used in the Yip Man lineage is written Wing which means Praise or sing praise or Beautiful (and that is the subject of a completely other article).

So as you can see the different names don’t generally mean a different martial art but rather a spelling preference often harking back to a Chinese master or Grandmaster who was attempting to use a western alphabet too phonetically capture the sounds of his or her particular spoken language or dialect.

Therefore when my own teacher (Master Kevin Earle) began to teach in New Zealand he chose the spelling used by his Chinese teacher (and private student to Grandmaster Yip Man (Ip Man)); Ving Chun Kuen.

At Man Sau Gwoon in respect to Sigung Tsoi Siu Kwong we use Ving Chun Kuen in our logo and interchangeably with Wing Chun Kuen in general.