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What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

kontinentalist.com

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Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#11

Post by saint_angels »

happy_pancake wrote: post #2

My great...great great grandparents decided that the second character in the names of all sons and daughters follow a chinese poem so that when the extended family meets, just by our names alone, we would know which generation we were from. I only found out recenty. It’s now around the 18 character of the poem. My parents skipped a character in the poem for me because it was too difficult for them to find a meaningfu…

"we would know which generation we were from." - did you find it useful for that? Or is it just a uniting narrative

Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#12

Post by nirui »

> For example, the Chinese equivalent of “John Smith”—a common English name in the United States—would be 王俊杰 (wang2 jun4 jie2).

Not sure about whether or not it's really that common, but given the fact "王俊杰" means King, Handsome and Prominent individually, I'd say that name is pretty close to the up limit of what you can get from a 3-characters name.

Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#13

Post by ateng »

SenHeng wrote: post #7
happy_pancake wrote: post #2

My great...great great grandparents decided that the second character in the names of all sons and daughters follow a chinese poem so that when the extended family meets, just by our names alone, we would know which generation we were from. I only found out recenty. It’s now around the 18 character of the poem. My parents skipped a character in the poem for me because it was too difficult for them to find a meaningfu…

I don't know if it's a poem but my ancestors from Hainan island passed down this list of words to use for each generation. So all the men in m family have names following this order. FamilyName WordFromList RealName and people address us as WordFromListRealName. Apparently, this list is also shared with other Hainanese descendants that share the Heng family name (maybe we have a shared lineage?) because my relatives…

Interesting enough, my family uses the (less common) format of .

Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#14

Post by yorwba »

happy_pancake wrote: post #9
SenHeng wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's a poem but my ancestors from Hainan island passed down this list of words to use for each generation. So all the men in m family have names following this order. FamilyName WordFromList RealName and people address us as WordFromListRealName. Apparently, this list is also shared with other Hainanese descendants that share the Heng family name (maybe we have a shared lineage?) because my relatives…

Yes that is the format. Sometimes, there can be two character names. I only know that my grandparents are from shanghai, but I cannot speak shanghainese. I am learning from my dad and aunts because the intonation is more difficult for me as compared to speaking chinese or cantonese.

You might be interested in Tatoeba's collection of Shanghainese audio recordings: https://tatoeba.org/eng/audio/index/wuu

Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#15

Post by wodenokoto »

> Daughters too are expected to be “excellent” (佳, jia1—with the “man” radical)

It was my understanding that 人 was “man” as in “person” (gender neutral) and not “man” as in male.

Is the author wrong or have I been applying modern PC standards to my language study?

Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#16

Post by klrkdekira »

ateng wrote: post #13
SenHeng wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's a poem but my ancestors from Hainan island passed down this list of words to use for each generation. So all the men in m family have names following this order. FamilyName WordFromList RealName and people address us as WordFromListRealName. Apparently, this list is also shared with other Hainanese descendants that share the Heng family name (maybe we have a shared lineage?) because my relatives…

Interesting enough, my family uses the (less common) format of .

My mom's family follows this convention.

Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

wodenokoto wrote: post #15

> Daughters too are expected to be “excellent” (佳, jia1—with the “man” radical) It was my understanding that 人 was “man” as in “person” (gender neutral) and not “man” as in male. Is the author wrong or have I been applying modern PC standards to my language study?

[deleted]

Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#18

Post by iliketosleep »

wodenokoto wrote: post #15

> Daughters too are expected to be “excellent” (佳, jia1—with the “man” radical) It was my understanding that 人 was “man” as in “person” (gender neutral) and not “man” as in male. Is the author wrong or have I been applying modern PC standards to my language study?

The article explains it perfectly: Understandably, male names still do not spot the “woman” radical (女, nü). 女 explicitly refers to women, whereas the “man” radical (亻, ren2) is more flexible, as it refers to humans.

This is also consistent with my understanding. On a cultural note, many ppl call Westerners with PC leanings “白左” and view the PC movement as a bit ridiculous. So definitely don’t apply modern PC standards to China.

Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#19

Post by k_sze »

happy_pancake wrote: post #2

My great...great great grandparents decided that the second character in the names of all sons and daughters follow a chinese poem so that when the extended family meets, just by our names alone, we would know which generation we were from. I only found out recenty. It’s now around the 18 character of the poem. My parents skipped a character in the poem for me because it was too difficult for them to find a meaningfu…

I belong to Shi Lang’s clan and, traditionally, my clan has the second character following a poem bestowed by Emperor Kangxi for the recovery of Taiwan. It’s really cool when I bump into random Shi people, even some from Malaysia, and we can tell who is senior (generation-wise), by comparing our second character. :P

Also, in case anybody is curious, this system is called 昭穆.

Re: What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?

#20

Post by nirui »

wodenokoto wrote: post #15

> Daughters too are expected to be “excellent” (佳, jia1—with the “man” radical) It was my understanding that 人 was “man” as in “person” (gender neutral) and not “man” as in male. Is the author wrong or have I been applying modern PC standards to my language study?

You are right, 人 (or radical 亻) is a gender neutral term means "Person/People". You can add gender ahead of it to be more specific, for example, Man means 男人 (Male Person), and Woman means 女人 (Female Person). As far as I can tell, there is no default gender for 人.

Learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_9

I don't know if the combination (亻+圭) makes it gender specific, but as far as I know, many males also has 佳 in their names. I'd say the character is neutral, as long as the name is not 佳佳 which sounded too cute to be a male.

On the other hand, 蕊 is not gender neutral, because you don't call a man Flower and it's a different "Rui" from the one in my name.

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