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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?

#41

Post by SeanLuke »

Black101 wrote: post #21

> 14,872 Chinese characters. aren't those words from an English point of view?

The closest thing they'd be in English would be a Latin root. Some Chinese words are a single character, but most are multi-character, and like Latin roots, characters have a "meaning" associated with the set of words in which they appear. For example, the character anciently used for lightning now appears in many words associated with electricity, such as phones, TVs, electric subway trains, computers, and so on, as well as seemingly unrelated words (like "movie") which actually have a historical etymological relationship to electricity (the projectors).

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

#42

Post by hnarn »

iliketosleep wrote: post #18
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 standar…

> On a cultural note, many ppl call Westerners with PC leanings “白左” and view the PC movement as a bit ridiculous.

Putting aside whether "westerners with PC leanings" are "ridiculous" or not, it's hardly surprising that a country ruled by the CCP would have isolationist tendencies against international leftist movements that do not align with their own national interests. This power grab over language and definition is pretty evident in any "socialist" one party state that has existed.

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

#43

Post by offby37years »

hnarn wrote: post #42
iliketosleep wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 standar…

> On a cultural note, many ppl call Westerners with PC leanings “白左” and view the PC movement as a bit ridiculous. Putting aside whether "westerners with PC leanings" are "ridiculous" or not, it's hardly surprising that a country ruled by the CCP would have isolationist tendencies against international leftist movements that do not align with their own national interests. This power grab over language and definition…

“Westerners with PC leanings” are considered ridiculous by most every culture in the world. If there is any ideology that has a “power grab over language and definition” it is the modern, Western left.

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

#44

Post by hnarn »

offby37years wrote: post #43
hnarn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a cultural note, many ppl call Westerners with PC leanings “白左” and view the PC movement as a bit ridiculous. Putting aside whether "westerners with PC leanings" are "ridiculous" or not, it's hardly surprising that a country ruled by the CCP would have isolationist tendencies against international leftist movements that do not align with their own national interests. This power grab over language and definition…

“Westerners with PC leanings” are considered ridiculous by most every culture in the world. If there is any ideology that has a “power grab over language and definition” it is the modern, Western left.

I was very consciously not trying to have this discussion based on how I phrased my comment, so could you please raise the bar a little?

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

#45

Post by k_sze »

andromeduck wrote: post #37
k_sze wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest getting in touch with a local chapter of your clan association (宗親會). To those who are not Chinese: yes, “clan association” is a thing among the Chinese, especially among clans who are likely to have expats - e.g. clans from coastal provinces like Shanghai, Guangdong, Fujian. My Shi clan has chapters in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, and probably at least a few major cities on the West Coas…

I'm a Deng, and don't think we have that though it's been suggested that I have the dubious honor of having been inscribed in the same book as mr Xiaoping. Whether that's actually true or not IDK but there's also the double irony of my parents almost having been killed in 89 but for a last minute decision to stay with the local movement. For a triple dose, one of them is a Trump/Bannon/Guo paleocon now, the other a m…

Deng is a pretty big family name with many clans. Does your father or grand father still know the name of their Hall (堂號)?

Alternatively, if you know a fragment of the poem, you can DuckDuckGo it and see.

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

#46

Post by k_sze »

yftsui wrote: post #32

In China, usually you could tell a person’s age by reading the names. However, the exception would be if the family’s ancestors were literate thus made a genealogy book, where the book will tell you which character could be used for the first character of a given name for the next few hundred years of the descendants; plus the descendants was able to protect a from the political movements in 1960s. My family’s geneal…

> My family’s genealogical book was mandated to be destroyed in the 1960s, hence I won’t able to tell my grandchildren which character was selected for his kids as my grandparents wasn’t able to recall the remaining.

That sucks to hear. Don’t lose hope though. Does your family still remember which exact clan you belong to? There might have been expat members or ones who fled to Taiwan/HK/Macau and have a copy of the book.

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

#47

Post by bradrn »

canjobear wrote: post #28
Black101 wrote: post #21

> 14,872 Chinese characters. aren't those words from an English point of view?

Technically each character is a morpheme, not just a syllable—-a syllable is a unit of sound but a morpheme carries some meaning along with the sound. And in Mandarin, many words consist of two or more morphemes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme

Syllables and morphemes are not the same! In Chinese languages, all (or nearly all) morphemes are syllables, but not all syllables are morphemes. From Li and Thompson’s Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar:

> The relatedness between the meaning of a compound [i.e. bisyllabic word] and those of its components can vary from close to nonexistent … For example, qūzú ‘to chase’ is composed of two morphemes from Classical Chinese … neither of which exists any longer as a morpheme in modern Mandarin.

That is, in many cases, the syllables of disyllabic Mandarin words are no longer synchronically analysable as morphemes, though at one point in the past it was possible to analyse them in this way. In this particular case, neither the character for qū nor the character for zú represents a morpheme, at least when used in this context.

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

#49

Post by canjobear »

bradrn wrote: post #47
canjobear wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically each character is a morpheme, not just a syllable—-a syllable is a unit of sound but a morpheme carries some meaning along with the sound. And in Mandarin, many words consist of two or more morphemes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme

Syllables and morphemes are not the same! In Chinese languages, all (or nearly all) morphemes are syllables, but not all syllables are morphemes. From Li and Thompson’s Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar : > The relatedness between the meaning of a compound [i.e. bisyllabic word] and those of its components can vary from close to nonexistent … For example, qūzú ‘to chase’ is composed of two morphemes fr…

That's right, more properly stated, each character represents a morpheme in Classical Chinese, with a few exceptions for bimorphemic words like 蝴蝶 which are probably of foreign origin.

There are also a few modern characters in informal use which indicate multiple syllables/morphemes like 圕 for "túshūguǎn".

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