About the origin of Harkman’s name, and the speculation of whether it is related to Ip Man, let me explain. Our criteria for his name is for it to be meaningful for a boy, be a unique name that sounds good in Chinese, Cantonese, and English!
I really liked how my name, when read as “Why Keen” is easy to read, and has meaning in it’s English form too, but find it a pain when people read it as “Wei Keen”. So it was a tough job in the first place.
A lot of words in Cantonese sound funny in English, for example Gay. Imagine if Harkman was Gayman, you get the point. So I was already compiling a list of words that sounded ok, when the movie was released, the word Man was shortlisted.
Hark is a nice, masculine sounding word, and the English word Hark is quite meaningful too, to listen; to hearken. So Harkman, means a guy who listens. Hopefully that implies that he has the wisdom to listen, to see, and to think before acting.
Now down to the Chinese characters. Hark Man in chinese is Ke Wen. Ke for Ke Fu, solve, or overcome. Wen for Wen Ti, problems. So Ke Wen is a solver of problems.
So despite the very obvious inspiration from Ip Man, a lot of thought had gone into thinking about the meaning and vocalization of Harkman’s name. Of course, if he can be half of the man Ip Man was, it would have been pretty cool too. I am also a huge fan of comics, and Harkman sounds like some superhero, that contributes to his name too, I guess.
