I’ve written about the character for ‘tiger’ before, but seeing as I’ve just uploaded the Origin of the Tiger scripture along with a translation and commentary from Bai Gengsheng, I think it’s time to say a little more about tigers in Naxi culture.
The tiger is very important in Naxi mythology, and also plays a large role in the Naxi language – 
la33 la21′, ‘healthy’, literally means ‘tiger tiger’, although it is generally written as ‘tiger hand’ to reflect the tonal difference in the second la.
Many places around Lijiang also use tiger in their name, such as Lashi county, 
la33 sɪ55, and Lugu Lake, 
la33 t’a33 hɰ55 .
Some Naxi believe that the tiger was the forefather of all humans; and the Naxi character 
dzɪ33 la21 a31 p’v33, the Naxi god and father of ts’e55 ho21 bu33 be21 mi55, the legendary ancestor of the Naxi people, bears this out. The character depicts a god in heaven, with a tiger’s head and human legs. That many Naxi historically took the surname ‘la’ (tiger) attests to this close relationship between man and tiger. In fact, Naxi legends of the mythical Jade Dragon kingdom recount that red tigers serve as mounts there, instead of horses.
What would be the Mandarin equivalent of the La surname that is likely to show up on national ID cards and legal documents? I know of about 50 different Mandarin surnames starting with /l/ but not a single “La”, which is why I ask.
Well, I reckon that it’s probably a historical thing as I don’t know any Naxi people with the surname La. Most Naxi are surnamed 和 in Chinese, and there’s quite a few with the family names 李, 木 and 赵.
Interesting. Most Uyghurs I know have multi-syllabic family names in Chinese where the characters are just transcribing the Uyghur. So قا دىر Qadir becomes 卡’德’尔, punctuation added since that’s the name of a rather famous disliked activist woman and we don’t need to get Sinoglot blocked. I guess I just assumed it would be the same with Naxi family names.