Chinese names are names used by individuals from Greater China and other parts of the Sinophone world. Sometimes the same set of Chinese characters could be chosen as a Chinese name, a Hong Kong name, a Japanese name, a Korean name, a Han Taiwanese name, a Malaysian Chinese name, or a Vietnamese name, but they would be spelled differently due to their varying historical pronunciation of Chinese characters.
Modern Chinese names generally have a one-character family name () followed by an individual name (), which may be either one or two characters in length. In recent decades, two-character individual names are much more commonly chosen; studies during the 2000s and 2010s estimated that over three-quarters of China's population at the time had two-character individual names, with the remainder almost exclusively having one character.
Prior to the 21st century, most educated Chinese men also used a courtesy name ("style name"; ) by which they were known among those outside their family and closest friends. Respected artists or poets will sometimes also use a professional art name () among their social peers.
From at least the time of the Shang dynasty, the Chinese observed a number of naming taboos regulating who may or may not use a person's individual name (without being disrespectful), the use of which connoted the speaker's authority and superior position to the addressee. Peers and younger relatives were barred from speaking it. Owing to this, many historical Chinese figures, particularly emperors, used a half-dozen or more different names in different contexts and for different speakers. Those possessing names (sometimes even mere homophones) identical to the emperor's were frequently forced to change them. The normalization of personal names after the May Fourth Movement has generally eradicated aliases such as the school name and courtesy name, but traces of the old taboos remain, particularly within families.
History Although some terms from the ancient Chinese naming system, such as () and (), are still used today, it used to be much more complex.
In the first half of the 1st millennium BC, during the Zhou dynasty, members of the Chinese nobility could possess up to four different namespersonal names ( ), clan names ( ), lineage names ( ), and "style" or "courtesy" names ( ) as well as up to two titles: standard titles ( ), and posthumous titles ( or ).
Commoners possessed only a personal name (), and the modern concept of a "surname" or "family name" did not yet exist at any level of society. The old lineage () and clan names () began to become "family names" in the modern sense and trickle down to commoners around 500 BC, during the late Spring and Autumn period, but the process took several centuries to complete, and it was not until the late Han dynasty (1st and 2nd centuries AD) that all Chinese commoners had surnames.
Family names
Although there are currently over 6,000 Chinese surnames including non-Han Chinese surnames () in use in China, the colloquial expression for the "Chinese people" is Bǎixìng () "Hundred Surnames", and a mere hundred surnames still make up over 85% of China's 1.3 billion citizens. In fact, just the top three—Wang (), Li (), and Zhang ()—cover more than 20% of the population. This homogeneity results from the great majority of Han family names having only one character, while the small number of compound surnames is mostly restricted to minority groups. The most common compound surname still in use in ethnic Han families is Ouyang.
Chinese surnames arose from two separate prehistoric traditions: the and the (). The original were clans of royalty at the Shang court and always included the radical. The did not originate from families, but denoted fiefs, states, and titles granted or recognized by the Shang court. Apart from the Jiang () and Yao () families, the original have nearly disappeared but the terms ironically reversed their meaning. is now used to describe the surnames which replaced them, while is used to refer to maiden names.
The enormous modern clans sometimes share ancestral halls with one another, but actually consist of many different lineages gathered under a single name. As an example, the surname Ma () includes descendants of the Warring States–era bureaucrat Zhao She, descendants of his subjects in his fief of Mafu, Koreans from an unrelated confederation, and Muslims from all over western China who chose it to honor Muhammad.
Traditionally, a married woman keeps her name unchanged, without adopting her husband's surname. A child would inherit their father's surname. This is still the norm in mainland China, though the marriage law explicitly states that a child may use either parent's surname. It is also possible, though far less common, for a child to combine both parents' surnames. Due to Western influence, the tradition of a woman changing her surname, or prepending her husband's to her own, is reflected in some Hong Kong names and Macao names, such as Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, whose original surname was Cheng and the surname Lam was legally added from her husband Lam Siu-por after marriage.
Given names
Given names show much greater diversity than the surnames, while still being restricted almost universally to one or two syllables. Including variant forms, there are at least 106,000 individual Chinese characters,The 2004 Taiwanese Ministry of Education Dictionary of Chinese Variant Form compiled 106,230. but as of 2006, in the People's Republic of China Public Security Bureau only approximately 32,000 are supported for computer input and even fewer are in common use. Given names are chosen based on a range of factors, including possession of pleasing sound and tonal qualities, as well as bearing positive associations or a beautiful shape. Two-character may be chosen for each character's separate meaning and qualities, but the name remains a single unit which is almost always said together even when the combination no longer 'means' anything.
Today, two-character given names are more common and make up more than 80% of Chinese given names.Woo Louie, Emma & al. Chinese American Names: Tradition and Transition. McFarland, 2008. . Accessed 22 March 2012. However, this custom has been consistent only since the Ming dynasty. About 70% of all given names were only one character long during the early Han and that rose beyond 98% after the usurping Wang Mang banned all two-character given names outright. Although his Xin dynasty was short-lived, the law was not repealed until 400 years later, when northern invasions and interest in establishing lineages revived interest in such longer names. The Tang and Song saw populations with a majority of two-character given names for the first time, but the Liao between them and the Yuan afterward both preferred single character given names. The restoration of Han dominance under the Ming, promotion of Han culture under the Qing, and development of generation names established the current traditions. A generation name is a single character, one of the two characters of a given name, and is shared by all siblings and paternal cousins of the same generation.
Given names resonant of qualities which are perceived to be either masculine or feminine are frequently given, with males being linked with strength and firmness and females with beauty and flowers. It is also more common for female names to employ diminutives like Xiǎo or doubled characters in their formal names, although there are famous male examples such as Deng Xiaoping and Yo-Yo Ma. People from the countryside previously often bore names that reflect rural life—for example, Daniu (, lit. "Big Bull") and Dazhu (, lit. "Big Pole")—but such names are becoming less common.
It is also considered bad form to name a child after a famous person, although tens of thousands might happen to share a common name such as "Liu Xiang". Similarly, owing to the traditional naming taboos, it is very uncommon in China to name a child directly after a relative, since such children would permit junior family members to inappropriately use the personal names of senior ones. Ancestors can leave a different kind of mark: Chinese naming schemes often employ a generation name. Every child recorded into the family records in each generation would share an identical character in their names. Sixteen, thirty-two, or more generations would be worked out in advance to form a generation poem. For example, the one selected in 1737 for the family of Mao Zedong read:
Stand tall & display unstintingly before gentlemen, And study & method will expand the borders of our fortune. Ancestral favors bequeath kindness through the ages, Descendants forever obliged for their prosperity.
This scheme was in its fourteenth generation when Mao rejected it for the naming of his own children, preferring to give his sons the generational name An (, lit. "Lofty", "Proud") instead. A similar practice was observed regarding the stage names of Chinese opera performers: all the students entering a training academy in the same year would adopt the same first character in their new "given name". For example, as part of the class entering the National Drama School in 1933, Li Yuru adopted a name with the central character "jade" ()..
Depending on the region and particular family, daughters were not entered into the family records and thus did not share the boys' generation name, although they may have borne a separate one among themselves. Even where generation names are not used, sibling names are frequently related. For example, a boy named Song () might have a sister named Mei (). In some families, the siblings' names have the same radical. For example, in the Jia () clan in Dream of the Red Chamber, a novel mirroring the rise and decline of the Qing dynasty, there is Zheng (), She (), and Min () in the first generation, Lian (), Zhen (), and Huan () in the second, and Yun (), Qin (), and Lan () in the third.
More recently, although generation names have become less common, many personal names reflect periods of Chinese history. For example, following the victory of the Communists in the Civil War, many Chinese bore "revolutionary names" such as Qiangguo () or Dongfeng (). Similarly, in Taiwan, it used to be common to incorporate one of the four characters of the name "Republic of China" () into masculine names. Periodic fad names like Aoyun () also appear. Owing to both effects, there has also been a recent trend in China to hire fortune tellers to change people's names to new ones more in accordance with traditional Taoist and five element practices. In creating a new Chinese name, it is sometimes the practice to analyze the number of strokes in the characters used in the potential name and attempt to use characters that produce specific totals of strokes.
Spelling
The process of converting Chinese names into a phonetic alphabet is called romanization.
In mainland China, Chinese names have been romanized using the Hanyu Pinyin system since 1958. Although experiments with the complete conversion of Chinese to the Pinyin alphabet failed,DeFrancis, John. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. it remains in common use and has become the transcription system of the United Nations and the International Organization for Standardization. Taiwan officially adopted Hanyu Pinyin as one of their romanisation schemes in 2009, although it continues to allow its citizens to use other romanisations on official documents such as passports, of which Hanyu Pinyin remains unpopular. The system is easily identified by its frequent use of letters uncommon in English, such as "q", "x", and "z"; when tones are included, they are noted via tone marks. In Pinyin, is written as Máo Zédōng.