Posted by
splat
20 yrs ago
In HK carparks the payment office is called the shroff. What does this stand for? My best guess
is short-term parking office...but does anyone
know for sure what it means?
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splat
20 yrs ago
Answered my own question I think. Learn something new every day and all that!
SHROFF: A money-changer, a banker. The word is used by Europeans in China as well as in India, and is applied to the experts who are employed by banks and mercantile firms to check the quality of the dollars that pass into the houses.
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gneel
20 yrs ago
Hi Splat
Thanks for that. Appreciate you finding that out and sharing. : )
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Like many Asian-English terms, it derives from Hindi. The Hindi word is (apparently) "saraf", meaning cashier or coin-tester.
The reason many Asian-English terms derive from Hindi is that, in Victorian times, Britain did not have enough gweilo civil servants to do everything in HK and Malaya etc, so they drafted in civil servants from India (which had a massive British-trained civil service). When the Indians were not sure of the "authentic" English terms, they used Hindi terms (as with those drainage channels, which in HK are known as "nullah" - another Hindi term).
I understand that if you look at many early "British" maps of HK, Indian script (rubbed out, but still visible) appears next to the "definitive" Anglicised place names, as the cartographers were Indian and transcribed the Cantonese sounds into their own script.
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I think it was in in "Feeling the Stones", the reminiscences of Sir David Akers-Jones (a former Acting Governor of HK).
Even if that book wasn't the source for this, you may well enjoy reading it if you're interested in this sort of stuff about HK.
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Shroff is one of the surnames found in the Parsi (and sometimes Gujarati) community in India. Sometimes their surnames reflect the occupation of an ancestor who passed down the name, and Shroff is one such.
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2006
20 yrs ago
SHROFF
Etymology: Hindi sarAf & Urdu sharAf, ultimately from Arabic sarrAf: a banker or money changer in the Far East, especially one who tests and evaluates coins; a cashier.
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If youre interested in the etymology of Anglo- Indian words the definitive guide is the "Hobson Jobson". A very fascinating read!
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