Leslie Wong says the original owners would have come from one of four main villages in China - Poon Yue, Poon Fah, Seyip or Jungseng.
Mr Wong says the Public Trust would be "barking up the wrong tree" if it consulted the communist Chinese Government or Mandarin-speaking academics about the origins of Otago goldminers, who were exclusively Cantonese.
Mr Wong contacted the Otago Daily Times after it reported management of the last of 23 abandoned sections in the Queenstown Lakes District had been handed over to the Public Trust, which must tryto find any descendants ofthe original owners.
Nine of the sections are in Cardrona and among the names used on property titles there in the 1870s were Ah Kin [or possibly Ah Hin], Wong You, Yeong Wah and Ah Lem.
Apart from being able to determine which villages the people would have come from, he believed it would be very difficult for the Public Trust to trace their family origins.
A child born in a Cantonese village started life with a "milk" name.
At the age of 8 or 9 it was replaced with a new name that everyone in the village would know them by, but unrelated to their milk name.
Neither of these names was recorded.
Then at age 15 or 16, Cantonese people were given an additional "adult name" which, in those days, would also not have been registered.
"And when they came to New Zealand, they changed their name again," Mr Wong said.
It was not uncommon for New Zealand immigration officials to accidentally reverse the names, transposing the family name, which is the first name, with their given name.
And to add a further difficulty, the new New Zealand name was anglicised - rendering it of no value in the search for an individual's family origins.
Mr Wong said there was no Chinese name of "Ah" (as in Ah Kin). It was a common substitute used when there was uncertainty over a name. It would be a waste of time using such names, written on property titles, to trace the owners.
And he did not consider either that the Public Trust would find descendants by searching Chinese records through communist China.
"Communist China does not speak Cantonese. They speak Mandarin."
A final stumbling block in the search for descendants was created by the Chinese cultural revolution when, in 1979, the communist government "threw away all the records" and wrote a new set of titles for the older village land-owners using hearsay names.
Mr Wong believes Otago Cantonese Chinese should have been consulted in the search, and that proceeds from the sale of the abandoned sections with Chinese owners should be added to the New Zealand-Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust set up by the Helen Clark Labour government to further Cantonese heritage and culture.
A Public Trust spokesman told the ODT it was too soon to comment on who might benefit from the proceeds but a beneficiary like the trust "would certainly be considered".
The Public Trust had engaged "specialist genealogical expertise" to trace descendants of the original owners and they "have already begun working with Chinese and Cantonese communities".
