China's huge population shares a great deal of surnames. According to the ancient
Chinese documents, they ranged from 300 to 3,000. But most specialists in this field
agree that the most common surnames of the Han Chinese number some 500.
Chinese surnames are said to have originated in the prehistorical matriarchal society.
The character for surname, Xing (
),
is a combination of two other characters, Nv (
)
and Sheng (
), meaning 'born of woman.' An ancient Chinese name often included four
parts: first the family name, followed by the given name, the alias, and then what's known
as the 'style.' Take the great poet Li Bai for example. His surname in Chinese is Li (
).
His given name Bai (
) means 'white.' His alias is
Tai Bai (
), and 'style'
Qing Lian (
), meaning 'green lotus.' One would choose his alias and 'style'
when he entered adulthood. People called one another by the alias to show mutual respect.
Chinese people always attach great importance to the choice of names. As the old saying
goes, under the right name, then can it be within your jurisdiction. In the Chinese
earliest dictionary it was explained as follows: name contained the invisible fate and
the visible and meaning characters. Fate was something intangible and negative, it
coincided with 'the hidden material,' on which the Western scientists are working
hard to find out. With concrete form and meaning, name belonged to the positive symbol
of characters. It functioned far more than just a code for every specific person.
Therefore in the past, when elders named a new born baby, they took several factors
into full consideration: the astrological principles, the birthdate, the array of
five elements (metal, wood, water, fire, and earth) told by the fortune-teller,
the form, pronunciation, and meaning of name. Now superstition being lessened and
constraints reduced, there are still some rules of thumb to be followed:
1, balance between the baby's birthdate and the five elements in its life,
try to remedy the defects with the name;
2, try to avoid the same initial consonant and simple or compound vowel
(of a Chinese syllable), and the same tone in the characters is not preferred either;
3, as to the form, a character with not too many strokes nor the same component will
be a good choice;
4, the preference for the meaning of a character changes with time.
The May Fourth Movement in 1919 brought with it what was known as the 'vernacular
Campaign' and drastic changes in Chinese culture. So did it influence names.
It contended all sorts of characters could be used to form a person's name.
Then after the founding of New China, name began to take on a political touch,
such as 'Ai Guo' which means 'love the country' and so on. The favorite words
included: red, army, revolution, soldier, east, etc.
Another obvious change in Chinese name is that many people now use only two
characters. A study shows that, before 1966, about 90 percent
of chinese names had three characters. But a recent survey tells us that about half
of today's younger people have two character names.
Written by our column writer Hao Zhuo.
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