The Mystery of the Kee Continues

During my wanderings, I often come across a particular Chinese character on the signs hanging above shops and markets. When written in English, the character is spelled kee. Usually the character is the second or third in the name of shops and markets. For example, some noodle shops in Hong Kong:

• 池記雲呑麵家 - Chee Kee Won Ton Min, Causeway Bay
• 權記雲呑麵 - Kuen Kee Won Ton Min, Central
• 劉森記 - Lau Sham Kee, Sham Shui Po
• 麥文記麵家 - Mak Man Kee Min, Tsim Sha Tsui
• 六記 - Luk Kee, Macau (not actually HK, but nearby)

Imagine you're in Macau, and hoping to score some noodles at Luk Kee. Imagine you flag down a local and query, where is Luk Kee? Imagine confusion, shifty eyes, and the local's glaringly obvious desire to make immediate distance between you both. No Cantonese speaker would understand Luk Kee. You could be standing in front of the restaurant, and behind you is a flashing yellow sign with the name of the shop in big bold red letters--in both Chinese and English--but if you ask for Luk Kee, there will be blank stares and awkwardness.

Had you instead pronounced the store name as luk-gei, the way the locals say it, you'd be chowing down on delicious noodles and dace meatballs in no time. Instead, you're stuck in language limbo, because the English spelling of kee is wrong. Why on earth would we deliberately spell a character so it's always mispronounced?

Hưng Ký Mì Gia, a Saigon noodle shop

I want to know where the spelling of kee comes from. The history of language tells no tales, but perhaps a clue can be found in Vietnam. The Vietnamese word ký is the same as the Chinese word. It means designation or record, as in the signature one would put on a document or work. And like the Chinese character, ký also means shop, and it commonly takes the same position as the second or third word in storefront signs.

More than half of Vietnamese vocabulary was borrowed from the Chinese language over the ages. Early Vietnamese literature was written in Chinese characters starting in the 6th century. Therefore, Vietnamese pronunciation of Chinese words likely reflects Middle Chinese phonetic conventions. In China, the spoken languages radiated and were influenced by external factors. These changes would have had little to no bearing on Vietnamese pronunciation.

It's possible that the Vietnamese pronunciation ký reflects the Middle Chinese pronunciation of the character. But, who knows? Even if the Vietnamese pronunciation reflects the Chinese language of antiquity, the connection doesn't explain the original question: why did the English speakers in Hong Kong take a Chinese character that was pronounced gei and spell it kee? The answer remains a mystery.