A Passage to China (走近中国) - The One-Character Given Name and the Two-Character Given Name

The drop of generation name and the practice of the birth control policy brought the Chinese name more and more into the pattern of family name + one-character given name. This “economical” naming pattern led to unexpected result. Please come and see what the one-character given name brought about:

In Beijing, there were 129 Liu Wei (刘伟) born simultaneously 1069.

In Shanghai, there were 397 who were born during the period between 1968 and 1971 and who shared the same name, Wang Wei (王伟). There are more than 13,000 females who share the same name, Wang Xiaomei (王小妹).

In Tianjin, there are more than 2,000 who share the same name Zhang Li (张力), Zhang Ying(张英), Zhang Jian (张健), and Zhang Ying (张颖).

In Shenyang, over 3,000 people are named Wang Wei(王伟) and over 3,000 named Li Jie (李杰).

In Guangzhou, there are more than 2,400 people who share the name Liang Mei (梁妹) and the name Chen Mei (陈妹) each, among which there are both male and female.

In Chongqing, at a primary school master was announcing the names of prize winners in mathematics contest, but when he was announcing the name of Jiang Bo(江波), seven boys stood up and went up to the stage for the prize. At the same school, there were six pupils who were named Zhou Wenyu (周文郁), five Wang Li(王丽), and five Jiang Jiaying (江佳颖)。

In a big ward of a hospital in a certain city, there were ten patients. Of the ten patients, there were two sharing the name, Zhang Caiying(张彩英), one old and the other young. One day, the old Zhang died for no apparent reason. After an examination, it turned out that she died of drug poisoning. A nurse had carelessly given the wrong medicine (for the young Zhang Caiying) to the elder one, and so pushed the old lady to death.

In a certain city, the police were searching for a suspect named Li Shiying (李世英) and policemen found that there were 78 people who had Li Shiying as their name. Of the 78, there were young and fashionable girls, old and ailing women, strong and able men, and little and innocent children in kindergarten. The policemen were amazed at the number of the people who beard the same name.

From the above examples, it is apparent that the one-character given name pattern produces more probability of duplication of names. The duplication of names, however, is not a phenomenon of the present. If we look back, we will find that in China’s history, there are times when the one-character given name was very popular. In the Period of the three Kingdoms, for example, there were a lot of names with one-character given name: Cao Cao(曹操), Cao Pi(曹丕), Cao San(曹散), Cao Fang(曹芳), Cao Mao(曹髦), Cao Huan(曹奂), Liu Bei(刘备), Liu Chan(刘禅), Sun Quan(孙权), Sun Liang(孙亮), Zhuge Liang (诸葛亮), Guan Yu(关羽), Zhang Fei(张飞), Zhao Yun(赵云), Sun Jian(孙坚), Sun Ce(孙策), Zhou Yu (周瑜), Lu Su(鲁肃),Huang Zhong(黄忠), Ma Chao(马超), Yuan Shao(袁绍), Yuan Su(袁术), Lu Bu(吕布), Wang Zuo(王佐), Jiang Gan(蒋干), Xiahou Ting(夏侯亭), Huang Gai(黄盖), Lu Xun(陆逊), Xu Chu(许褚), Zhang Liao(张辽), Meng Huo(孟获), Ma Ji(马稷), Jiang Wei(姜维), Sima Yi(司马懿), Sima Zhao(司马昭), Deng Ai(邓艾), and Hua Tuo(华佗).

If one gose back to the history of the Eastern Dynasty and the Period of the Three Kingdoms, one can find that the one-character given name pattern was popular then and the classical novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms easily shows that. From Emperor Guang Wudi Liu Xiu(刘秀) to Emperor Han Xiandi Liu Xie (刘协), there were 13 emperors who all had one chaeacter given name. Those emperors were Liu Xiu(刘秀), Liu Zhuang (刘庄), Liu Ju(刘炬), Liu Zhao(刘肇), Liu Long(刘隆), Liu Hu(刘祜), Liu Bao(刘保), Liu Bing (刘炳), Liu Zuan(刘缵), Liu Zhi(刘志), Liu Hong (刘宏), Liu Bian(刘编), and Liu Xie(刘协).

From the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Western Jin Dynasty into which the Three Kingdoms were united, time covered about 300 yuans. Calcuated from the Western Han Dynasty to the Eastern Jin Dynasty, there were 54 emperors. Only four of them had a two-character given name and all the others had the one-character given name. The one-character given name takes about 93% of the total. It is obvious that that period is one when the one-character given name saw its first domination.

The practice of one-character given name is the result of taboos by society. If a character was used by the emperor in his name, that character was not allowed to anybody else. When society entered the Dynasties of Qin and Han, there were more and more taboos and as a result there appeared big disorders in names, not only in personal names but also in names of books, names of reign titles and official titles. In order to reduce the bad results of too many taboos and to leave more room for people and society, the emperors began the agreed practice of using one-character given name (the use of one character in the given name reduced taboos by half in comparison to two characters in the given name) and the practice of using rare and unfamiliar characters.

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