Just a fun fact. In the old days, especially in the rural areas where poverty was extremely high, infancy deaths were very high. This led to the belief that the evil spirits were behind this, taking their children away.. So, some of them named their son, dog, cow etc. hoping that the evil spirits would get mistaken and not take them away. Long time ago, one of my neighbor had a son named "dog" and a dog named "Wang Chai" (Prosperous Wealth), a name which is better than the son. The son worked hard like a dog but eventually became successful and reasonably wealthy...I guess thanks to the dog's name too. 🤣🤣🤣
I have a friend that still continues the family poem naming up to this day, he is the 11th generation. And recently he returned to China to visit his relatives and also the ancestral grave. They presented him with a book which documents their ancestors from a millennia ago, for the first 8 generations straight, his family were government officials with official portraits and biography. Quite mind-blowing, imagine keeping stuff from your ancestors from a thousand years ago.
In my family, we have a generation poem for 7 generations. I don't know what will be next after the 7th (I'm 6th generation, and I used to have 2nd generation live in the same city). However, since we currently live outside China (has been for several generations), the practice are eroded. One of my uncle is not named after generation poem, so are my nephews.
the stroke count is another part of chinese naming culture. when my kids were born, we gave them english and mandarin names. My father did a stroke count to make sure the characters resulted in a good stroke count.
The number 4 (四) is unlucky because it sounds like the word _die_ (死). So the stroke count cannot be four strokes. The number 24 (二四) is unlucky because in Cantonese, it sounds like _easy die_ (易死), so the stroke count cannot be 24 strokes. The number 6 (六, pinyin: liù) in Mandarin sounds like "slick" or "smooth" (溜, pinyin: liū). In Cantonese, 6 (Cantonese Yale: lok6) sounds like "good fortune" or "happiness" (祿, 樂 Cantonese Yale: lok6). Therefore 6 is considered a good number for stroke count. The number 8 (八, pinyin: bā; Cantonese Yale: baat) sounds like "發" (pinyin: fā; Cantonese Yale: faat; lit. 'to prosper'). Therefore 8 is considered a good number for stroke count. Steve Wozniak held the United States telephone number +1(408) 888-8888 for many years in Silicon Valley. In 2014, the Australian Department of Home Affairs renamed their previous Business Skills (provisional) visas, subclasses 160-165, to 188 and 888 Subclasses, both of which include eights. In 2003, the phone number "+86 28 8888 8888" was sold to Sichuan Airlines for CN¥2.33 million (approximately US$280,000). The opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing began on 8/8/08 at 8 minutes and 8 seconds past 8 pm local time (UTC+08). The Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia each have 88 floors. Buick offers a minivan for the Chinese market under the GL8 name, a model name not used in any other market. The Air Canada route from Shanghai to Toronto is Flight AC88, and the route from Hong Kong to Vancouver is Flight AC8. The KLM route from Hong Kong to Amsterdam is Flight KL888. The Etihad Airways route from Abu Dhabi to Beijing then onwards to Nagoya is Flight EY888. The United Airlines route from Beijing to San Francisco is Flight UA888, the route from Beijing to Newark is Flight UA88, and the route from Chengdu to San Francisco is Flight UA8. The Air Astana route from Beijing to Almaty is Flight KC888. The British Airways route from Chengdu to London is Flight BA88. The Cathay Pacific route from Hong Kong to Vancouver is Flight CX888. Singapore Airlines reserves flight numbers beginning with the number 8 for flights to Mainland China, Hong Kong (except SQ1/2 to and from San Francisco via Hong Kong) and Taiwan. SriLankan Airlines reserves flight numbers beginning with the number 8 for flights to Mainland China and Hong Kong. The Turkish Airlines route from Istanbul to Beijing is TK88. Boeing delivered the 8,888th 737 to come off the production line to Xiamen Airlines. As part of grand opening promotions, a Commerce Bank branch in New York's Chinatown raffled off safety deposit box No. 888. Similar to the common Western practice of using "9" for price points, it is common to see "8" being used in its place to achieve the same psychological effect. So for example menu prices like $58, $88 are frequently seen.
@@RandomBb56 The number 4 and the word _die_ are homonyms in all of the spoken Chinese languages, Japanese, and Korean. That's why there is no 4th floor in the buildings of those countries. It's no different from the absence of a 13th floor or 13th Street in Western countries.
I am in my eighties from a traditional Chinese family. I have lived more than half of my life in the West. Seldom have I encountered a non-Chinese westerner with such remarkable understanding of Chinese culture. You handled the proverbial four Mandarin tones perfectly. That's no small feat. I am fluent in 3 Chinese dialects ( 普通話，四川話， 閩南話). The latter is the ultimate challenge. I look forward to hearing your take on 閩南七聲八調 one of these days. Cheers.
There's little similarities between minnan and sichuan. I assume minnan is your first language? Which minnan do you speak? Minnan languages are losing the speakers in Malaysia.
@@chingfonglau6470 I speak 四川話 with 重慶accent and 閩南話 with 廈門 accent. By the way, I would not call Minnan a language despite its peculiar idiosyncrasies. They are all dialects which carry their own distinctive mode of pronunciation of the Chinese language. Call me old fashioned if you will, but I am very protective of Chinese regional dialects. They are what makes Chinese language so unique. I lament the day when they get dismissed into oblivion by the almighty 普通話/國語。
Vietnamese last names also exist in Chinese for instance “ Nguyen = 阮 = ruan; Tran = 陳=Chen ; Ngo = 吳 = wu ; Truong = 張 = zhang; Vo = 武 = wu ; Ho = 胡 = Hu “ and many many more . 😅
The Nguyens of Vietnam is special case. There's no way their extended family encompass 1/3 of Vietnamese (they are not breeding rabbits, after all 😅). The explanations often given are: - some people changed their surname into Nguyen to get into the Nguyen gravy train. Cmiiw, the last dynasty was from Nguyen. - some native adopted Nguyen surname because it's one of the common surname. - royal families often granted their royal family surname to favorite nobles or generals. - some people with "cursed" surname (surname of enemies to the royal family) being hunted all over the country. They tried to obscure their identity by change it into a common surname, which more likely be ... Nguyen.
The characters of my given name mean 'think' and 'happiness' and my parents were wishing that i find happiness in thinking. And now I'm here doing a phd lol they sure manifested it
Very well explained. Thank you. Actually, for sibling names, either the first character or the second character stays the same, so it doesn’t necessarily has to be the first characters. For example, my sister and I have the second character the same as “Min” 敏, while the first character changes. My paternal and maternal uncles and aunties all have the second character remaining the same. The same goes for the Chiang Kai Shek family, where his sons’ names all have the second character remaining the same while the first character changes like 蒋经国 Jiang Jing Guo, 蒋纬国 Jiang Wei Guo. As for last name pronunciations, I found that Sinospheric cultures like Korea and Vietnam that adopt Chinese last names are like different Chinese dialects. For the last name 李, the Vietnamese spelling is Le, the Korean spelling is Lee, the Cantonese spelling is Lee, and the Mandarin spelling is Li. But for the same spelling, we might end up with different Chinese characters, such as the spelling Choy in Korean is actually 崔 (Cui in Mandarin romanization) while the Choy spelling in Cantonese is this character 蔡 (Cai in Mandarin romanization). The last name 阮 is romanized in Vietnamese as Nguyen and in Mandarin as Ruan. The last name 陈 is romanized in Vietnamese as Tran and Chen in Mandarin and Chan in Cantonese and Chin in some southeast Asian countries such as Myanmar (I used to have a friend with the Chin last name for 陈）. It’s all about Sinospheric dialects’ romanization. For the Chinese last name 金 (gold), it’s romanized in Korean as Kim, in Cantonese as Gum, in Mandarin as Jin. Japan is also a Sinospheric Tang Dynasty replica culture (Google search for “Japanese missions to Tang Dynasty” and “Japanese missions to imperial China”), but because each Chinese character has at least two different pronunciations, one onyomi which is the Chinese pronunciation, and the other kunyomi which is the local Japanese pronunciation, so the last names of Japanese are a bit different from China, and the other two Sinospheric cultures Vietnam and Korea. For example, the character 山 is pronounced as yama in kunyomi, as in Yamamoto 山本 and Yamaguchi 山口, but in onyomi as san, as in Fujisan 富士山. So for Japanese past names, even though they also use Chinese characters, they are pronounced the kunyomi or local Japanese way instead of the Sinospheric pronunciations.
At the start of my first semester of Mandarin, our class's graduate assistant chose Chinese names for the students who didn't have them. (This was in San Francisco, so there were several local, native Cantonese speakers in the class already having fully Chinese names.) 我姓郭，叫郭愛德。=> Mine is 郭愛德 _Guō ài dě: Guo [family] + love virtue._ She didn't realize it, but her choice was fortuitous because (as you know) that third character (德) is also used to mean _Germany_ or _German._ My BA is in German and Music, and my maternal-maternal great grandmother was Hessian. An important point is that Chinese family names were originally matrilineal, which is why the character for _family name_ 姓 has "woman" as its radical. (They became patrilineal by the Shang dynasty, 1600-1046 BCE.)
My surname is 蔣 and my family is still using the Generation Name at the middle of our Chinese names. I had a unique experience with the generation name, as one day I met an old man, a Chinese descendant who had already being a grandfather of several grandchildren, in a location that is considered an older Chinatown in my hometown. I was once called him "uncle" because of his much older age from mine. He was already in mid 70 years old and I was in early 40. After some intensive conversation when it started about the Chinese name, it revealed that he had the same surname with mine and based on the Generation Name that he carried, it turned out that the old man must was my grand nephew (!) and then he started to call me Grand Aunt! 😁 Imagine that you have a grandchild somewhere that aged much, much older than you! 😂
That’s what happened to me, I have a nephew who’s 20 years older than me due to our generational differences. It’s a weird feeling when he called me uncle.
I got two Chinese names. One from my paternal grandfather and one from my maternal grandfather. The paternal ones has the generation poem character. Meanwhile, my maternal grandfather requested the help of some sort of a Chinese traditional priest to find me a Chinese name. I usually go with the name from the traditional priest xD
As a lover of Oriental Arts, from painting to Martial Arts, I am also a Chinese TV series addict! Although watching with subtitles, this explains a lot of the names of the characters in the series. I often see too, that they are quite happy to accept a given name by a friend, that describes their best attributes. Fascinating, and really enjoyed this video! Thank you.
So fascinating. Thanks for the useful information. For 10 years I struggled to find my family tree because I couldn't read nor write Mandarin although it had been alluded to me by an uncle there exists some info in some temple somewhere in the city I was born. A few years ago, I finally visited this "Temple/Association" when my distant cousin became the President. Lo & behold, I learnt I am 19th generation, and there exists a worldwide organisation for my surname, with "chapters" in many countries, and a global gathering every 2 years. I now learnt through your video, the middle names come from a poem, which helps explain why all the boys in my generation have the same middle names as are the girls (pretty egalitatrian given some comments here said there wasn't any for the females), and the next and next generation middle names have already been decided. I know that my grandfather chose my name and with some info gathered here, I can uncover more of what and why of the meaning. I visited my grandfather's village in China and stayed with my relatives and saw several hundred years thick handwritten manuscripts (and I mean super thick) of my family tree which includes birth and death dates, spouse's and children names. The closest rellies I stayed with - our origin started from the 15th generation! Mindboggling. I envy those who can read and write Mandarin as I know some of the history relayed to me was lost on me despite using parrot as the translator. Yes, there are also several famous peeps in my ancestry, including an Emperor, Generals (warriors), poets, etc all of whom are still recognised by peeps in China when their names are mentioned. So amazing to learn more and more of my roots. Thanks very much for the video.
What a well made video! I’m ethnically Chinese, 3rd generation Singaporean. Ive never knew the existence of a family poem even though I knew that male names in my family need to follow a certain order. I’m gonna look for my family poem now!
Thanks for this interesting and insightful video. Just wish to add to your 5:51 re 派字歌 and 罗宗x and 罗守x - In many Chinese dialect groups, the generation "first character given name" is only given to sons and not daughters.
I am an American born Chinese but still keep my family’s generstion name/poem. We pick western names whose first syllables would transliterate to the required starting character (not always using the standard or established hanzi-spellings or western names).
The western/ English name is sort of like the continuation of the courtesy name, for others to call us (especially for non-Chinese who butcher the tones & can’t even pronounce a single syllable of our names). It also does seem “rude” or inappropriate for people other than my family to call me by my given Chinese name. In Hong Kong, of course there’s an English name being used. But even it if weren’t for the colonisation, a lot of Taiwanese & mainlanders will chose an English or western name & then introduce themselves w/ that, even to fellow Chinese. Or they would just pick a nickname/ alias & tell you to call them that instead of their official given name.
Choosing a Chinese name is a very difficult task. It is best to consult someone with deep knowledge of Chinese culture and history. One can tell the education of the parents from the names of their kids.
True. My sister in law who has very limited knowledge of Chinese characters or culture has named her son “健康” and her husband’s name is Mo either 毛 or 巫. Either is not ideal 😂 probably reverse what she originally wished for😂
One partial correction: Inasmuch people tend to identify Chinese with the overwhelmingly dominant Han ethnicity, there are only 438 surnames (and close variations on them), with less than 400 still active. You can approach 4,000 surnames (maybe) if you take in all the minorities within China, including ethnic Koreans, Turks, Tibetans, Russians, Mongols, etc.it is understandable that these groups are not typically regarded as Chinese.
I've been learning Chinese on and off since December 26,2019. I still haven't chosen a Chinese name like a lot of learners. I think this video will help me to finally decide on one.😅
Singer Actor Xu Wei Zhou got his name by his parents putting their surnames names together (xu & zhou)and putting his given name (wei) in the middle, hugged between his parents names. Apparently his full name is pretty unique even in china, fans say based on searching on databases.
These names tend to be given by selfish parents who both want to leave their mark in the child's name instead of giving something meaningful, that's why it's unique.
@unidentifiedflavourfulobject There is nothing weird about the name that I am talking about. Pretty sure it's a well thought out name. I know you are talking about eccentric names parents give in the west, but that is not the case here.
Great video. Deciding on a chinese name for my daughter was such a long process. Most of my western friends were perplexed as to why it was so difficult
About the names before the 秦 Qin Dynasty, the situation was a little bit different. The biggist different was that, back then, the 姓 Xing and the 氏 Shi, were actually different things. 姓 Xing on one hand, was some kind of matrilineal family name (or sort of tribal name, because it was originally used to distinguish the consanguinity), more often used by female; while 氏 Shi was more of a patrilineal family name (or perheps honorific family name, because they were in the first place adopted by the nobles, to differentiate between derivations of a same 姓 Xing), more often used by male. E.g., 孔子Kong Zi (Confucius): 姓 Xing: 子 Zi/ 好 Hao (while in 孔子Kong Zi, the latter 子Zi is an honorific title, as said in the video) 氏 Shi: 孔 Kong 名 Given name: 丘 Qiu 字 Courtesy name: 仲尼 Zhongni And such difference is why people later often "misuse" these different names, by addressing a male with his 姓 Xing, rather than his 氏 Shi (of course, acceptable from a morden perspective as long as we dont confuse different persons). That was the case of 姜子牙 Jiang Ziya: 姓 Xing: 姜 Jiang 氏 Shi: 吕 Lü 名 Given name: 尚 Shang/ 望 Wang (controversial) 字 Courtesy name: 子牙 Ziya/ 尚父 Shangfu (controversial) 爵 Peerage: 齐公 Gong of Qi There are, of course, numerous ways to address him. Actualluy, in different historical texts we can see couple of dozen different appellations for him, such as 姜尚 Jiang Shang, 姜望 Jiang Wang, 姜子牙 Jiang Ziya, 吕尚 lü Shang, 姜太公 Jiang Tai Gong, 吕太公 Lü Tai Gong, 齐太公 Qi Tai Gong, 太公望 Tai Gong Wang, 尚父 Shang Fu, etc. But we can see that most of the appellations that start with his 姓 Xing (姜 Jiang) are from later historical periods, at least after the Qin Dynasty, when 姓 Xing and 氏 Shi started to be combined as one single concept. Properly speaking, I think back in his time, it would be most proper to address him by his 氏 Shi + 爵 Peerage, hence the 吕太公 Lü Tai Gong (Great Gong Lü), or simply his Peerage, 齐太公 Qi Tai Gong (Great Gong of Qi). But after all, it actually depends on who we are and when we are. That is one of the tricky things when look into Chinese history before 秦 Qin Dynasty, the so called 先秦 Xian Qin period (literally "before Qin" ). There were so many traditions that are so difficult to clarify, due to all kinds of differences.
In Mainland China, romanized names should be written in two parts: family name and given name. There is no space inside each part. Only the first letter of each part should be capitalized. Also, names from minority ethnic groups should be romanized differently. There are several mistakes at 16:00 Personal Name: Liu Che Li Shimin Aisin-Gioro Xuanye (Or, less frequently seen, Aixinjueluo Xuanye) And many inconsistencies in posthumous names, temple names and era names.
Some clans in China would find literate people or literary giants in the family in ancient times to write a poem in their family tree, that is, the poem, and then it would be passed down from generation to generation, and the names of each generation would follow that poem.
There are no vault to collect them all. Usually when someone was rich enough, they would contact a professional to write down a good poem for them to be used for their next generation. It's passed down from a generation to the next. And with 1 billion people (400 millions before communist takeover), you will have a lot of families with their own generational poem.
Each clan has a house, or temple, dedicated to worshipping ancestors. All clan information is kept here, including naming poems, as well as the names of each generation and each person's brief life story. This temple is usually built where the clan's first ancestor lived. Every time someone settles in a new place and builds a new temple, they will record which temple they came from and create a new naming poem. In southern China, it is not uncommon for a 600-year-old clan to have 100,000 to 300,000 people. Imagine 100,000 people coming together at a tomb on a festival to worship their common ancestor.
@@susinluo Come to think of it, my family also has that ancestor temple somewhere in Fujian. The caretaker was my grand aunt. But now that she passed away, I don't know who the current caretaker is. Like I said, we have been living outside of China for several generations, so the tradition is eroded.
@@gorilladisco9108 The elderly who stay in the area will take turns to maintain the temple. You should go back and see that the temple is still there. Even if they build a new one, they will not move it easily. Now there is no visa requirement, and you only need to pay for the air ticket, which is not difficult.
This was very interesting. Many foreigners living in China or Taiwan or studying Chinese get given a Chinese name, and I've seen the same with many Chinese taking English names. It would be great to see a video about how these get chosen, and maybe some interesting stories behind the names.
I'm chen clan. My extended family recycles 7 middle names to affix our ancestral seniority. That way we can meet juniors who are we old as our parents. My middle name was changed to avoid clash with my maternal uncles. Parents are both chen from different "dialect" / province, but not blood relations. We all have our place in our ancestral "book" back in China
essentially if you are a westerner, just remember Chinese names start with their last names (which is their surname) followed by personal name. So if you saw a Chinese named Bang Ding Ow....that's Mr. Bang not Mr. Ow.
I am so impressed of your explanation. Even me ethnically Chinese (born in HK), knowing the basic traditions behind Chinese names including the emperors, I am still very impressed the steps you went through to distinguish from one to another, I am particuarly fascinated by the emperor names as I have learnt the Chinese history when I was at history but didnt really pay much attention to it until now when you explained. Thank you!
How do I go about finding a naming expert? I’m studying Chinese and want a Chinese name so badly but my tutor said she isn’t very good and doesn’t want to give me a name. I’d love one that comes from a poem and is a “good name”. I’m stuck on Zhaoyan 朝颜，or 昭言 and don’t know which is better but also open to other names that isn’t a flower. Surname is 张/漲
I would probably choose ‘昭言’. ‘ 朝颜‘ is a short-lived flower, which doesn't have a good meaning as a name in Chinese (although not many people probably care about that nowadays), and because ‘朝’ is polyphonic, it's very likely that some people will subconsciously pronounce it as ‘chao’. You can also combine the two options and choose ‘昭颜’ (means ‘bright face'), which is of the same pronunciation as ‘朝颜’. By the way, the traditional Chinese character for ‘张’ is ‘張’, not ‘漲’ (zhǎng: rise, increase or flooding; zhàng: expand, be full of, swell).
Wow this is really in-depth. I particularly like youalso mentioned the era names that are still adopted in Taiwan and Japan. Also the dramatic difference to the naming convention in Europe
Very interesting video but I have some questions: 1. I've met Chinese people who have just one syllable given names. Is that very uncommon and do you know why the standard became two syllables/characters? 2. The Kangxi emperor had a long birth name. Is that related to the Qing being of Manchu origin (or would he have another name in Manchu?)? 3. Is the 5 elements related naming convention still something Chinese people commonly believe?
Hi these answers are just based on my personal experience and knowledge, they might not be correct but I will try answer them all: (1) one syllable given names is the monority but not VERY uncommon, its still a quite normal thing to do, but with 2 syllables (2 characters) its easier to convey meanings and make the sound just roll smoother. When a person has a 2 syllables family name it is more likely that they have a 1 syllable given name and it still adds up to 3 syllables, so it guess 3 syllables just sounds right for most people🤣 (2) the original name of Kangxi is essentially in another language, their phonetics, writing, and naming practices are all very different with Chinese Mandarin. (3) not everyone still believe in this but many do, I am born in the 2000s and there was a person in my high school class who changed their name right before finishing school so that it fits better with their 5 elements Fengshui. But we very rarely talk about what our name means so I am not exactly sure how common it is.
2. Kangxi Emperor is Manchu by origin, and his original surname is Aisin-Gioro, which means gold in Manchu. After the empire's demise, the last emperor's siblings chose Jin as their surname.
One of the things that attracted me to see your videos about Chinese culture is this : “your videos are educational to me about Chinese traditional culture , the more I watch them , the more I become interested to know about tradition and culture . And the more realizing that I did no know about the culture and traditions “ So fascinating . 🫶
Very good overview! FYI, that was about Han names. Many Hui names come from the first or last syllable of the transliterated Arabic or Persian name of the ancestor. My family name for example is 買， while my husband’s family name is 仝、 both not belonging to the 百家姓。
Back in the foot binding days, some women weren't even given names but a number instead. So they would be called big sister, second sister, third sister, etc., then small sister.
my chinese mother was born in 1948, and i've noticed many an uncle with powerful, patriotic names such as "country" and "flag". my mother has a generational name that she shares with her 5 sisters (my aunts).
My name means showing my talents. People always read my name wrong because it is uncommon to use the word and the placement too. Like talent usually place in the second and showing is not a popular name to use. My sister’s name is reflecting growth. Her name is also rare
In Malaysia we also have different set of Chinese romanized name as Zhang become Chong or Choong, etc etc, Malaysian Chinese are common with Cantonese as well. Lately people would also put English name first and last name as Chinese for example David Cheng.
Chinese Indonesian also has their own romanized surnames. Li become Lie, Wang is Ong, and Huang is Oei. Sadly this practice eroded in 1960s, when they are forced by the government to use Indonesian sounding names. Thus we adapt with and get way more unique, names, such as Halim for Lim, Wijaya for Huang, etc
Your knowledge of this subject is excellent! The video was great! It would be fun to insert a five-minute tangent to explain Kangxi’s name (the fact that it’s a phonetic translator of Manchurian into Mandarin).
Can you guys pls make videos about the warring states period during the era of the 7 warring states because although I already have much knowledge about that era I feel like there are much more information.
I think the middle or 2nd character is applicable only to boys to denote generation (from poem). In our case my girl siblings have same 3rd character. Slightly homophone to their western name.
As the descendant that live their life away from the mainland, some family still continue this naming style: Family name - Middle name (aka the generation poem or what ever) - First name and my father generation and older still have their Alternate names as well that was surprised me when I learnt about this. Many person I know have long Thai name and surname and they struggle with writing their name in a documents so they decide to use their Chinese name, problem solve lol
You have great knowledge in Chinese names, you should be a consultant to a lot of big business like banks and insurance company on how to get the correct names on the envelopes as most are very confused and not know Chinese given names can have one or two characters.
The 派字歌 system of naming is more commonly adhered to by the southern Han people; not so much by the northern Han people anymore. Also, it is considered "mandatory" for male descendants only. It is really useful to identify the generational status of any male with the same surname, in the same dialect group.
Since there is a name for someone who weak said to be weak to all of the five elementa, was there any person who was given a name for the opposite problem?
名字 (meaning "name" in modern chinese) has a background story that explains the alternative names. You have the 名 name and the 字 name. 字 represents the courtesy name, which is 孔明 (Kǒngmíng) for Zhugeliang.
For Chinese mix khmer, we still do that too cause it sound more beautiful and rather unique to everyone as individual. Because there are many name keep overlapping as they sound like a thousand people keep using the same name in million of people.
My mother and I noticed an interesting phenomenon where different generations will have diff numbers of characters for the first name and it alternates. Obv there are exceptions but for example Tang Xuanzong's real name was Li Longji. His son Tang Suzong's name was Li Heng. Not always foolproof but the fashion is often kept. My cousins all except for one have 2 characters. Our parents have one character. For the one odd cousin out his dad had 2 characters
Your videos are always interesting and entertaining. ❤I was surprised to hear about the name orders in Asian countries. Hungarian names also start with family names followed by given names.
wow, very informative, your chinese knowledge is much much better than those chinese around the world. it enhance my knowledge. thank you for your video and looking forward your other videos.
Impressive, you know more Chinese than I do. My two children who were born in the U.S., only know conversational Cantonese, and cannot even write their names in Chinese.
I have a four-year-old Cantonese vocabulary and dropped out of Chinese school at 3rd grade, but I can still write my Chinese name and I maintain an English/Traditional Chinese/Simplified Chinese website.
I've always wondered how one family/dynasty name starts and another ends, even outside of China. Like, did the first Baker just decide to adopt that family name because he became a baker despite him being born a Johnson? Did the Tang dynasty end because a nephew of the last emperor had him assassinated and felt Sui was a nice dynastic name for his new empire? Was there an era where people felt it cool to adopt random family names or the most popular family names, like some time in Vietnam's history (I'm taking about your ancestors, Nguyens). That sort of thing.
in Roman naming conventions: "Gaius" is the given name, the Praenomen- the the Nomen, "Julius" (Of the Gens, Julii), and "Caesar" is the Cognomen, which is descriptive of the individual or an ancestor. In contrast to the Chinese attempts at uniqueness, Everyone is either named Gaius, Marius, etc. -in Julius Caesar's family, there are a lot of people named "Gaius Julius Caesar"
Thank you for this explanatory video. I had not previously known what a "courtesy name" was. I suppose the term is the same one that is also translated "style" in an old translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber."
One of the well-known persons who I knew with family poem is Confucius (Kong Zi), I met and noticed famous person named “Kong Qing xxx” or “Kong Ling xxx”
My Chinese given name is 秀慧 and I like to joke that my parents named me Pretty Smart (it's really closer to "elegant [and] wise/knowledgeable", but Pretty Smart is funnier). Once at the beginning of the year in high school my mandarin teacher was doing roll call for the first time. She got to my name, called it out, paused, looked around until she found me, squinted for a bit, and then went "ok, 还可以" (not bad/passable). I died XD Fun fact, 成 (chéng) means “to become”, “to turn into”. 龍 (lóng) is “dragon”. Thus, Jackie Chan’s Chinese stage name, 成龍 (Chénglóng), literally means “become dragon”. This is actually a bit of a pun/reference. Specifically, it is a reference to Bruce Lee, whose stage name was 小龍 (Xiǎolóng), or, “Little dragon”. So Jackie’s chosen stage name means both “become dragon”, and “become [like] Bruce Lee”.
There are several other names that someone can go by. 乳名: infancy name for when the parents want to wait until your personality is apparent to give you a name. 譜名: the name that will be recorded in your family tree. 訓名: The name that your teacher calls you because the teacher has hopes for you and both you and your parents generally respect that. 號: Titles or nicknames that you call yourself or others call you. 藝名: artistic name or stage name. And then there's your rank of the age in a generation of a family name that usually goes like surname+number that's usually known among your family's neighbors; For example 牛二, 張三, 李四.
Brother i was wondering if you can help me in some translation of word in real mandarin about bow because I reinstating my martial arts i want in Chinese command
Very interesting for a native Chinese！It reminds me，perhaps the case of surnames in China is similar to that of given names in the West，whereas the Chinese given names are similar to the family names in the West，as far as the number of choices is concerned. John, Bob,Mike as to Li,Wang,Zhang. On the other hand, the sky is the limit as to our given names. Courtesy names are chosen by the person's father or grand father at his birth or by himself later and usually have the similar meaning to his given name, e.g. 诸葛亮字孔明，孔 here means big. 亮means bright--明.
Just a fun fact. In the old days, especially in the rural areas where poverty was extremely high, infancy deaths were very high. This led to the belief that the evil spirits were behind this, taking their children away.. So, some of them named their son, dog, cow etc. hoping that the evil spirits would get mistaken and not take them away. Long time ago, one of my neighbor had a son named "dog" and a dog named "Wang Chai" (Prosperous Wealth), a name which is better than the son. The son worked hard like a dog but eventually became successful and reasonably wealthy...I guess thanks to the dog's name too. 🤣🤣🤣
this kind of naming culture also exists in Turkmenistan, where they give their children weird names to save them from evil eyes
Thanks for the story.. never had been thinking of this
I remember from my childhood superstitious neighbours calling their kids "dog", "ugly" etc. They remained so! 😂
Poverty was highest in 1960s...more than 46 mullion died and thats consevative estimate. Unprecedented
more exactly is because a dog is easier to raise, unlikely to die.
I have a friend that still continues the family poem naming up to this day, he is the 11th generation. And recently he returned to China to visit his relatives and also the ancestral grave. They presented him with a book which documents their ancestors from a millennia ago, for the first 8 generations straight, his family were government officials with official portraits and biography. Quite mind-blowing, imagine keeping stuff from your ancestors from a thousand years ago.
In my family, we have a generation poem for 7 generations. I don't know what will be next after the 7th (I'm 6th generation, and I used to have 2nd generation live in the same city). However, since we currently live outside China (has been for several generations), the practice are eroded. One of my uncle is not named after generation poem, so are my nephews.
My ancestors were peasants so we are free in naming our kids, lol.
@@gorilladisco9108you can get few generation of first character of their first name and Google it. That's how I got my family's poem.
11th generation is not enough to cover millenia. I'm the 27th generation, our poem dates back to the 1380s
Your knowledge of Chinese names is so impressive.
😎🙏
the stroke count is another part of chinese naming culture. when my kids were born, we gave them english and mandarin names. My father did a stroke count to make sure the characters resulted in a good stroke count.
What’s a good stroke count?
The number 4 (四) is unlucky because it sounds like the word _die_ (死). So the stroke count cannot be four strokes. The number 24 (二四) is unlucky because in Cantonese, it sounds like _easy die_ (易死), so the stroke count cannot be 24 strokes.
The number 6 (六, pinyin: liù) in Mandarin sounds like "slick" or "smooth" (溜, pinyin: liū). In Cantonese, 6 (Cantonese Yale: lok6) sounds like "good fortune" or "happiness" (祿, 樂 Cantonese Yale: lok6). Therefore 6 is considered a good number for stroke count.
The number 8 (八, pinyin: bā; Cantonese Yale: baat) sounds like "發" (pinyin: fā; Cantonese Yale: faat; lit. 'to prosper'). Therefore 8 is considered a good number for stroke count. Steve Wozniak held the United States telephone number +1(408) 888-8888 for many years in Silicon Valley. In 2014, the Australian Department of Home Affairs renamed their previous Business Skills (provisional) visas, subclasses 160-165, to 188 and 888 Subclasses, both of which include eights. In 2003, the phone number "+86 28 8888 8888" was sold to Sichuan Airlines for CN¥2.33 million (approximately US$280,000). The opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing began on 8/8/08 at 8 minutes and 8 seconds past 8 pm local time (UTC+08). The Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia each have 88 floors. Buick offers a minivan for the Chinese market under the GL8 name, a model name not used in any other market.
The Air Canada route from Shanghai to Toronto is Flight AC88, and the route from Hong Kong to Vancouver is Flight AC8. The KLM route from Hong Kong to Amsterdam is Flight KL888. The Etihad Airways route from Abu Dhabi to Beijing then onwards to Nagoya is Flight EY888. The United Airlines route from Beijing to San Francisco is Flight UA888, the route from Beijing to Newark is Flight UA88, and the route from Chengdu to San Francisco is Flight UA8. The Air Astana route from Beijing to Almaty is Flight KC888. The British Airways route from Chengdu to London is Flight BA88. The Cathay Pacific route from Hong Kong to Vancouver is Flight CX888. Singapore Airlines reserves flight numbers beginning with the number 8 for flights to Mainland China, Hong Kong (except SQ1/2 to and from San Francisco via Hong Kong) and Taiwan. SriLankan Airlines reserves flight numbers beginning with the number 8 for flights to Mainland China and Hong Kong. The Turkish Airlines route from Istanbul to Beijing is TK88. Boeing delivered the 8,888th 737 to come off the production line to Xiamen Airlines.
As part of grand opening promotions, a Commerce Bank branch in New York's Chinatown raffled off safety deposit box No. 888. Similar to the common Western practice of using "9" for price points, it is common to see "8" being used in its place to achieve the same psychological effect. So for example menu prices like $58, $88 are frequently seen.
I guess 6, 8 is good, 4 is not good lol
@@RandomBb56 The number 4 and the word _die_ are homonyms in all of the spoken Chinese languages, Japanese, and Korean. That's why there is no 4th floor in the buildings of those countries. It's no different from the absence of a 13th floor or 13th Street in Western countries.
@@RaymondHng If one lives or works on the 5th or 14th floor of such a building, c’mon, we all know what floor they’re REALLY on lol
I am in my eighties from a traditional Chinese family. I have lived more than half of my life in the West. Seldom have I encountered a non-Chinese westerner with such remarkable understanding of Chinese culture. You handled the proverbial four Mandarin tones perfectly. That's no small feat. I am fluent in 3 Chinese dialects ( 普通話，四川話， 閩南話). The latter is the ultimate challenge. I look forward to hearing your take on 閩南七聲八調 one of these days. Cheers.
true
There's little similarities between minnan and sichuan. I assume minnan is your first language? Which minnan do you speak? Minnan languages are losing the speakers in Malaysia.
His pronunciation is amazingly good as a westerner. If I have to nitpick, he pronounced 金木水火土 as individual characters instead of a phrase.
@@chingfonglau6470
I speak 四川話 with 重慶accent and 閩南話 with 廈門 accent. By the way, I would not call Minnan a language despite its peculiar idiosyncrasies. They are all dialects which carry their own distinctive mode of pronunciation of the Chinese language.
Call me old fashioned if you will, but I am very protective of Chinese regional dialects. They are what makes Chinese language so unique. I lament the day when they get dismissed into oblivion by the almighty 普通話/國語。
@@csc6357 It is contradictory that you say you are protective of the dialects but are unwilling to call Minnan a language group.
Vietnamese last names also exist in Chinese for instance “ Nguyen = 阮 = ruan; Tran = 陳=Chen ; Ngo = 吳 = wu ; Truong = 張 = zhang; Vo = 武 = wu ; Ho = 胡 = Hu “ and many many more . 😅
how about "Phuc"?
I wonder if their ancestors originated from China. Even today there are Vietnamese with Chinese ancestry.
@@sz5263
You guess right. Ancestors of Vietnamese are from China according to both Chinese history and Vietnamese history. 😄
@@sz5263 same situation with korean names
The Nguyens of Vietnam is special case. There's no way their extended family encompass 1/3 of Vietnamese (they are not breeding rabbits, after all 😅).
The explanations often given are:
- some people changed their surname into Nguyen to get into the Nguyen gravy train. Cmiiw, the last dynasty was from Nguyen.
- some native adopted Nguyen surname because it's one of the common surname.
- royal families often granted their royal family surname to favorite nobles or generals.
- some people with "cursed" surname (surname of enemies to the royal family) being hunted all over the country. They tried to obscure their identity by change it into a common surname, which more likely be ... Nguyen.
The characters of my given name mean 'think' and 'happiness' and my parents were wishing that i find happiness in thinking. And now I'm here doing a phd lol they sure manifested it
Very well explained. Thank you. Actually, for sibling names, either the first character or the second character stays the same, so it doesn’t necessarily has to be the first characters. For example, my sister and I have the second character the same as “Min” 敏, while the first character changes. My paternal and maternal uncles and aunties all have the second character remaining the same. The same goes for the Chiang Kai Shek family, where his sons’ names all have the second character remaining the same while the first character changes like 蒋经国 Jiang Jing Guo, 蒋纬国 Jiang Wei Guo.
As for last name pronunciations, I found that Sinospheric cultures like Korea and Vietnam that adopt Chinese last names are like different Chinese dialects. For the last name 李, the Vietnamese spelling is Le, the Korean spelling is Lee, the Cantonese spelling is Lee, and the Mandarin spelling is Li. But for the same spelling, we might end up with different Chinese characters, such as the spelling Choy in Korean is actually 崔 (Cui in Mandarin romanization) while the Choy spelling in Cantonese is this character 蔡 (Cai in Mandarin romanization). The last name 阮 is romanized in Vietnamese as Nguyen and in Mandarin as Ruan. The last name 陈 is romanized in Vietnamese as Tran and Chen in Mandarin and Chan in Cantonese and Chin in some southeast Asian countries such as Myanmar (I used to have a friend with the Chin last name for 陈）. It’s all about Sinospheric dialects’ romanization. For the Chinese last name 金 (gold), it’s romanized in Korean as Kim, in Cantonese as Gum, in Mandarin as Jin. Japan is also a Sinospheric Tang Dynasty replica culture (Google search for “Japanese missions to Tang Dynasty” and “Japanese missions to imperial China”), but because each Chinese character has at least two different pronunciations, one onyomi which is the Chinese pronunciation, and the other kunyomi which is the local Japanese pronunciation, so the last names of Japanese are a bit different from China, and the other two Sinospheric cultures Vietnam and Korea. For example, the character 山 is pronounced as yama in kunyomi, as in Yamamoto 山本 and Yamaguchi 山口, but in onyomi as san, as in Fujisan 富士山. So for Japanese past names, even though they also use Chinese characters, they are pronounced the kunyomi or local Japanese way instead of the Sinospheric pronunciations.
your guys' videos are always awesome. Thanks for all the educational content!!
😁👍
At the start of my first semester of Mandarin, our class's graduate assistant chose Chinese names for the students who didn't have them. (This was in San Francisco, so there were several local, native Cantonese speakers in the class already having fully Chinese names.) 我姓郭，叫郭愛德。=> Mine is 郭愛德 _Guō ài dě: Guo [family] + love virtue._ She didn't realize it, but her choice was fortuitous because (as you know) that third character (德) is also used to mean _Germany_ or _German._ My BA is in German and Music, and my maternal-maternal great grandmother was Hessian.
An important point is that Chinese family names were originally matrilineal, which is why the character for _family name_ 姓 has "woman" as its radical. (They became patrilineal by the Shang dynasty, 1600-1046 BCE.)
I didn't know about the matrilineal history, that was a cool fact!
My surname is 蔣 and my family is still using the Generation Name at the middle of our Chinese names. I had a unique experience with the generation name, as one day I met an old man, a Chinese descendant who had already being a grandfather of several grandchildren, in a location that is considered an older Chinatown in my hometown. I was once called him "uncle" because of his much older age from mine. He was already in mid 70 years old and I was in early 40.
After some intensive conversation when it started about the Chinese name, it revealed that he had the same surname with mine and based on the Generation Name that he carried, it turned out that the old man must was my grand nephew (!) and then he started to call me Grand Aunt! 😁
Imagine that you have a grandchild somewhere that aged much, much older than you! 😂
That’s what happened to me, I have a nephew who’s 20 years older than me due to our generational differences. It’s a weird feeling when he called me uncle.
My grandma was pregnant in the same year as her eldest married daughter. Resulted, my eldest cousin's children are both older than me.
Thanks man, I was struggling with naming my ocs who are Chinese, it's really hard to learn culture when you start from scratch
👍
My oc would be called 鸡你太没.
You could just name 奥 which is normaly first name in Chinese
This is extremely interesting to watch from a Chinese perspective. You explained the topic very well
I got two Chinese names. One from my paternal grandfather and one from my maternal grandfather. The paternal ones has the generation poem character. Meanwhile, my maternal grandfather requested the help of some sort of a Chinese traditional priest to find me a Chinese name. I usually go with the name from the traditional priest xD
Nice
Cool 🎉
AWESOME admire your deep understanding! China's profound culture and history run through everyone's name
Learn and Write the surname
As a lover of Oriental Arts, from painting to Martial Arts, I am also a Chinese TV series addict! Although watching with subtitles, this explains a lot of the names of the characters in the series. I often see too, that they are quite happy to accept a given name by a friend, that describes their best attributes. Fascinating, and really enjoyed this video! Thank you.
So fascinating. Thanks for the useful information. For 10 years I struggled to find my family tree because I couldn't read nor write Mandarin although it had been alluded to me by an uncle there exists some info in some temple somewhere in the city I was born. A few years ago, I finally visited this "Temple/Association" when my distant cousin became the President. Lo & behold, I learnt I am 19th generation, and there exists a worldwide organisation for my surname, with "chapters" in many countries, and a global gathering every 2 years. I now learnt through your video, the middle names come from a poem, which helps explain why all the boys in my generation have the same middle names as are the girls (pretty egalitatrian given some comments here said there wasn't any for the females), and the next and next generation middle names have already been decided. I know that my grandfather chose my name and with some info gathered here, I can uncover more of what and why of the meaning.
I visited my grandfather's village in China and stayed with my relatives and saw several hundred years thick handwritten manuscripts (and I mean super thick) of my family tree which includes birth and death dates, spouse's and children names. The closest rellies I stayed with - our origin started from the 15th generation! Mindboggling. I envy those who can read and write Mandarin as I know some of the history relayed to me was lost on me despite using parrot as the translator. Yes, there are also several famous peeps in my ancestry, including an Emperor, Generals (warriors), poets, etc all of whom are still recognised by peeps in China when their names are mentioned. So amazing to learn more and more of my roots. Thanks very much for the video.
What a well made video! I’m ethnically Chinese, 3rd generation Singaporean. Ive never knew the existence of a family poem even though I knew that male names in my family need to follow a certain order. I’m gonna look for my family poem now!
Thanks for this interesting and insightful video. Just wish to add to your 5:51 re 派字歌 and 罗宗x and 罗守x - In many Chinese dialect groups, the generation "first character given name" is only given to sons and not daughters.
Yep
Votre video est vraiment super sympa, j'aime bien votre gestuelle dynamique et merci d'avoir donné quelques définitions au début.
I am an American born Chinese but still keep my family’s generstion name/poem. We pick western names whose first syllables would transliterate to the required starting character (not always using the standard or established hanzi-spellings or western names).
Admirable!
The western/ English name is sort of like the continuation of the courtesy name, for others to call us (especially for non-Chinese who butcher the tones & can’t even pronounce a single syllable of our names). It also does seem “rude” or inappropriate for people other than my family to call me by my given Chinese name.
In Hong Kong, of course there’s an English name being used. But even it if weren’t for the colonisation, a lot of Taiwanese & mainlanders will chose an English or western name & then introduce themselves w/ that, even to fellow Chinese. Or they would just pick a nickname/ alias & tell you to call them that instead of their official given name.
Choosing a Chinese name is a very difficult task. It is best to consult someone with deep knowledge of Chinese culture and history. One can tell the education of the parents from the names of their kids.
True. My sister in law who has very limited knowledge of Chinese characters or culture has named her son “健康” and her husband’s name is Mo either 毛 or 巫. Either is not ideal 😂 probably reverse what she originally wished for😂
You need to say it in Cantonese to get this😂
Great video,well explained as well
One partial correction: Inasmuch people tend to identify Chinese with the overwhelmingly dominant Han ethnicity, there are only 438 surnames (and close variations on them), with less than 400 still active. You can approach 4,000 surnames (maybe) if you take in all the minorities within China, including ethnic Koreans, Turks, Tibetans, Russians, Mongols, etc.it is understandable that these groups are not typically regarded as Chinese.
I've been learning Chinese on and off since December 26,2019. I still haven't chosen a Chinese name like a lot of learners. I think this video will help me to finally decide on one.😅
Best way: ask a chinese teacher or a chinese friend to avoid awkward names.
You can tell me your true name , maybe I can help you chose a Chinese name. I'm a native speaker in mandarin
Very illustrative and clearly presented!
Singer Actor Xu Wei Zhou got his name by his parents putting their surnames names together (xu & zhou)and putting his given name (wei) in the middle, hugged between his parents names. Apparently his full name is pretty unique even in china, fans say based on searching on databases.
These names tend to be given by selfish parents who both want to leave their mark in the child's name instead of giving something meaningful, that's why it's unique.
@unidentifiedflavourfulobject There is nothing weird about the name that I am talking about. Pretty sure it's a well thought out name. I know you are talking about eccentric names parents give in the west, but that is not the case here.
Your last name can trace your ancestral roots. My surname is 100% cantonese.
100% Cantonese?? As spelling in English? 98% Cantonese are Han Chinese with traditional Chinese surnames.
Great video. Deciding on a chinese name for my daughter was such a long process. Most of my western friends were perplexed as to why it was so difficult
謝謝你的分享！ 你分析的太好了！ Keep up the good work!
Masterclass presentation
About the names before the 秦 Qin Dynasty, the situation was a little bit different. The biggist different was that, back then, the 姓 Xing and the 氏 Shi, were actually different things.
姓 Xing on one hand, was some kind of matrilineal family name (or sort of tribal name, because it was originally used to distinguish the consanguinity), more often used by female; while 氏 Shi was more of a patrilineal family name (or perheps honorific family name, because they were in the first place adopted by the nobles, to differentiate between derivations of a same 姓 Xing), more often used by male.
E.g., 孔子Kong Zi (Confucius):
姓 Xing: 子 Zi/ 好 Hao (while in 孔子Kong Zi, the latter 子Zi is an honorific title, as said in the video)
氏 Shi: 孔 Kong
名 Given name: 丘 Qiu
字 Courtesy name: 仲尼 Zhongni
And such difference is why people later often "misuse" these different names, by addressing a male with his 姓 Xing, rather than his 氏 Shi (of course, acceptable from a morden perspective as long as we dont confuse different persons). That was the case of 姜子牙 Jiang Ziya:
姓 Xing: 姜 Jiang
氏 Shi: 吕 Lü
名 Given name: 尚 Shang/ 望 Wang (controversial)
字 Courtesy name: 子牙 Ziya/ 尚父 Shangfu (controversial)
爵 Peerage: 齐公 Gong of Qi
There are, of course, numerous ways to address him. Actualluy, in different historical texts we can see couple of dozen different appellations for him, such as 姜尚 Jiang Shang, 姜望 Jiang Wang, 姜子牙 Jiang Ziya, 吕尚 lü Shang, 姜太公 Jiang Tai Gong, 吕太公 Lü Tai Gong, 齐太公 Qi Tai Gong, 太公望 Tai Gong Wang, 尚父 Shang Fu, etc.
But we can see that most of the appellations that start with his 姓 Xing (姜 Jiang) are from later historical periods, at least after the Qin Dynasty, when 姓 Xing and 氏 Shi started to be combined as one single concept.
Properly speaking, I think back in his time, it would be most proper to address him by his 氏 Shi + 爵 Peerage, hence the 吕太公 Lü Tai Gong (Great Gong Lü), or simply his Peerage, 齐太公 Qi Tai Gong (Great Gong of Qi). But after all, it actually depends on who we are and when we are.
That is one of the tricky things when look into Chinese history before 秦 Qin Dynasty, the so called 先秦 Xian Qin period (literally "before Qin" ). There were so many traditions that are so difficult to clarify, due to all kinds of differences.
Thank you! i'm of a chinese heritage but i am more proned to english growing up. I learned new chinese knowledge from you! Subscribed!
In the ancient days, there are two last names from father and mother, that’s 姓+氏 but then it changed to keep the father last name .
Awesome 👍 first time I bumped into your great Chanel, I am already passed it to my grown sons born and grew up in Canada. Thanks much. Appreciated!
In Mainland China, romanized names should be written in two parts: family name and given name. There is no space inside each part. Only the first letter of each part should be capitalized.
Also, names from minority ethnic groups should be romanized differently.
There are several mistakes at 16:00
Personal Name: Liu Che
Li Shimin
Aisin-Gioro Xuanye (Or, less frequently seen, Aixinjueluo Xuanye)
And many inconsistencies in posthumous names, temple names and era names.
I am a chinese descendent and what he shared is so true. Thank you for good research and sharing this info. 🎉
This is such an interesting video, mostly because I didn't know I didn't know this. That's a channel I'm excited about 😊
Wich music is that on background while explaining emperor’s name? Where can i listen to full track ?
Music Credits :
The Mini Vandals - Perrywinkle
Fabio Emma - ElectroChina
Otis McDonald - Not For Nothing
Jeremy Blake - I Need U
Where to find the family generation poems?
Some clans in China would find literate people or literary giants in the family in ancient times to write a poem in their family tree, that is, the poem, and then it would be passed down from generation to generation, and the names of each generation would follow that poem.
There are no vault to collect them all. Usually when someone was rich enough, they would contact a professional to write down a good poem for them to be used for their next generation. It's passed down from a generation to the next. And with 1 billion people (400 millions before communist takeover), you will have a lot of families with their own generational poem.
Each clan has a house, or temple, dedicated to worshipping ancestors. All clan information is kept here, including naming poems, as well as the names of each generation and each person's brief life story. This temple is usually built where the clan's first ancestor lived. Every time someone settles in a new place and builds a new temple, they will record which temple they came from and create a new naming poem. In southern China, it is not uncommon for a 600-year-old clan to have 100,000 to 300,000 people. Imagine 100,000 people coming together at a tomb on a festival to worship their common ancestor.
@@susinluo Come to think of it, my family also has that ancestor temple somewhere in Fujian. The caretaker was my grand aunt. But now that she passed away, I don't know who the current caretaker is. Like I said, we have been living outside of China for several generations, so the tradition is eroded.
@@gorilladisco9108 The elderly who stay in the area will take turns to maintain the temple. You should go back and see that the temple is still there. Even if they build a new one, they will not move it easily. Now there is no visa requirement, and you only need to pay for the air ticket, which is not difficult.
Meanwhile in Japan: 一郎、二郎、三郎、四郎、五郎...
二郎亦會用次郎 in Japanese。
Chinese for the seniority will use：伯、仲、叔、季、少。
This was very interesting. Many foreigners living in China or Taiwan or studying Chinese get given a Chinese name, and I've seen the same with many Chinese taking English names. It would be great to see a video about how these get chosen, and maybe some interesting stories behind the names.
I'm chen clan. My extended family recycles 7 middle names to affix our ancestral seniority. That way we can meet juniors who are we old as our parents. My middle name was changed to avoid clash with my maternal uncles. Parents are both chen from different "dialect" / province, but not blood relations. We all have our place in our ancestral "book" back in China
i am of malaysian chinese descent, thank you for teaching me about my heritage and the meaning of my surname
essentially if you are a westerner, just remember Chinese names start with their last names (which is their surname) followed by personal name. So if you saw a Chinese named Bang Ding Ow....that's Mr. Bang not Mr. Ow.
I am so impressed of your explanation. Even me ethnically Chinese (born in HK), knowing the basic traditions behind Chinese names including the emperors, I am still very impressed the steps you went through to distinguish from one to another, I am particuarly fascinated by the emperor names as I have learnt the Chinese history when I was at history but didnt really pay much attention to it until now when you explained. Thank you!
I’ve learnt so much in a short span of time, it sure does explain a lot of my Chinese friends’ names
How do I go about finding a naming expert? I’m studying Chinese and want a Chinese name so badly but my tutor said she isn’t very good and doesn’t want to give me a name. I’d love one that comes from a poem and is a “good name”.
I’m stuck on Zhaoyan 朝颜，or
昭言 and don’t know which is better but also open to other names that isn’t a flower.
Surname is 张/漲
I would probably choose ‘昭言’. ‘ 朝颜‘ is a short-lived flower, which doesn't have a good meaning as a name in Chinese (although not many people probably care about that nowadays), and because ‘朝’ is polyphonic, it's very likely that some people will subconsciously pronounce it as ‘chao’. You can also combine the two options and choose ‘昭颜’ (means ‘bright face'), which is of the same pronunciation as ‘朝颜’.
By the way, the traditional Chinese character for ‘张’ is ‘張’, not ‘漲’ (zhǎng: rise, increase or flooding; zhàng: expand, be full of, swell).
Wow this is really in-depth. I particularly like youalso mentioned the era names that are still adopted in Taiwan and Japan. Also the dramatic difference to the naming convention in Europe
Man you deserve a PhD. In fact you’re better than a lot of experts.
Very interesting video but I have some questions:
1. I've met Chinese people who have just one syllable given names. Is that very uncommon and do you know why the standard became two syllables/characters?
2. The Kangxi emperor had a long birth name. Is that related to the Qing being of Manchu origin (or would he have another name in Manchu?)?
3. Is the 5 elements related naming convention still something Chinese people commonly believe?
Hi these answers are just based on my personal experience and knowledge, they might not be correct but I will try answer them all: (1) one syllable given names is the monority but not VERY uncommon, its still a quite normal thing to do, but with 2 syllables (2 characters) its easier to convey meanings and make the sound just roll smoother. When a person has a 2 syllables family name it is more likely that they have a 1 syllable given name and it still adds up to 3 syllables, so it guess 3 syllables just sounds right for most people🤣 (2) the original name of Kangxi is essentially in another language, their phonetics, writing, and naming practices are all very different with Chinese Mandarin. (3) not everyone still believe in this but many do, I am born in the 2000s and there was a person in my high school class who changed their name right before finishing school so that it fits better with their 5 elements Fengshui. But we very rarely talk about what our name means so I am not exactly sure how common it is.
2. Kangxi Emperor is Manchu by origin, and his original surname is Aisin-Gioro, which means gold in Manchu. After the empire's demise, the last emperor's siblings chose Jin as their surname.
I like the 5 elements together
One of the things that attracted me to see your videos about Chinese culture is this : “your videos are educational to me about Chinese traditional culture , the more I watch them , the more I become interested to know about tradition and culture . And the more realizing that I did no know about the culture and traditions “
So fascinating . 🫶
i am very impressed by your knowlege about Chinese culture, more than a lot of Chinese people.
16:55 This is an awesome piece of information. Thank you.
Very good overview! FYI, that was about Han names. Many Hui names come from the first or last syllable of the transliterated Arabic or Persian name of the ancestor. My family name for example is 買， while my husband’s family name is 仝、 both not belonging to the 百家姓。
GREAT JOB 🙏🏻✊🏻🙌🏻👍🏻🤝🏻 BLESSED TO KNOW YOU . THANKS FOR SHARING 💳
so many thaks, you share your incredible insights, always an amazing reference
Back in the foot binding days, some women weren't even given names but a number instead. So they would be called big sister, second sister, third sister, etc., then small sister.
Sound like a gullible individual and spread misinformations.
@@sportsonwheelss是真的。
Examples like: 「劉三姐」和「楊八妹」
my chinese mother was born in 1948, and i've noticed many an uncle with powerful, patriotic names such as "country" and "flag". my mother has a generational name that she shares with her 5 sisters (my aunts).
Amazing insights into China.
My name means showing my talents. People always read my name wrong because it is uncommon to use the word and the placement too. Like talent usually place in the second and showing is not a popular name to use.
My sister’s name is reflecting growth. Her name is also rare
In Malaysia we also have different set of Chinese romanized name as Zhang become Chong or Choong, etc etc, Malaysian Chinese are common with Cantonese as well.
Lately people would also put English name first and last name as Chinese for example David Cheng.
Chinese Indonesian also has their own romanized surnames. Li become Lie, Wang is Ong, and Huang is Oei.
Sadly this practice eroded in 1960s, when they are forced by the government to use Indonesian sounding names. Thus we adapt with and get way more unique, names, such as Halim for Lim, Wijaya for Huang, etc
I recently was given a chinese name 楊越雄, 3 years ago
Cool 👍
Your knowledge of this subject is excellent! The video was great! It would be fun to insert a five-minute tangent to explain Kangxi’s name (the fact that it’s a phonetic translator of Manchurian into Mandarin).
Can you guys pls make videos about the warring states period during the era of the 7 warring states because although I already have much knowledge about that era I feel like there are much more information.
I think the middle or 2nd character is applicable only to boys to denote generation (from poem). In our case my girl siblings have same 3rd character. Slightly homophone to their western name.
As the descendant that live their life away from the mainland, some family still continue this naming style: Family name - Middle name (aka the generation poem or what ever) - First name and my father generation and older still have their Alternate names as well that was surprised me when I learnt about this.
Many person I know have long Thai name and surname and they struggle with writing their name in a documents so they decide to use their Chinese name, problem solve lol
Thanks for information! Interesting!
Where do we find the generational poem of our surname? My surname is zhang 張. Does anybody know the generational poem of 張?
你需要知道你是哪里的张氏，搞清楚自己祠堂所在地才能知道你的字辈歌是什么。
张是大姓，全国有非常多的张氏宗祠，每一个都有不同的先人，不同的字辈。
或许问问你的父母或者祖父母他们来自哪里，这样你就能很容易找到自己所属的宗祠了。
每个家族都不一样，而且还有用完的时候，我名字中间字是“喜”，我儿子辈的字是“志”，再下一代就没有了。 以前用完的时候会重修族谱的时候重新再用新的字辈歌。 你也可以重新开宗，自己编一个自己这一宗的字辈歌。
Generation name turned out to be be very useful.
You have great knowledge in Chinese names, you should be a consultant to a lot of big business like banks and insurance company on how to get the correct names on the envelopes as most are very confused and not know Chinese given names can have one or two characters.
The 派字歌 system of naming is more commonly adhered to by the southern Han people; not so much by the northern Han people anymore. Also, it is considered "mandatory" for male descendants only. It is really useful to identify the generational status of any male with the same surname, in the same dialect group.
Since there is a name for someone who weak said to be weak to all of the five elementa, was there any person who was given a name for the opposite problem?
名字 (meaning "name" in modern chinese) has a background story that explains the alternative names. You have the 名 name and the 字 name. 字 represents the courtesy name, which is 孔明 (Kǒngmíng) for Zhugeliang.
I listened to the whole video, damn... so interesting.
Hey, thanks!
😎👍
For Chinese mix khmer, we still do that too cause it sound more beautiful and rather unique to everyone as individual.
Because there are many name keep overlapping as they sound like a thousand people keep using the same name in million of people.
You can also have the same second character instead. My brother and I have 傑 as the second character in our name.
My mother and I noticed an interesting phenomenon where different generations will have diff numbers of characters for the first name and it alternates. Obv there are exceptions but for example Tang Xuanzong's real name was Li Longji. His son Tang Suzong's name was Li Heng. Not always foolproof but the fashion is often kept. My cousins all except for one have 2 characters. Our parents have one character. For the one odd cousin out his dad had 2 characters
Your videos are always interesting and entertaining. ❤I was surprised to hear about the name orders in Asian countries. Hungarian names also start with family names followed by given names.
wow, very informative, your chinese knowledge is much much better than those chinese around the world. it enhance my knowledge. thank you for your video and looking forward your other videos.
Impressive, you know more Chinese than I do. My two children who were born in the U.S., only know conversational Cantonese, and cannot even write their names in Chinese.
If they want to know it is very easy,
tradional Chinese are helpful on revealing how to write. Many fleed from oppression and arrived US and Europe.
I have a four-year-old Cantonese vocabulary and dropped out of Chinese school at 3rd grade, but I can still write my Chinese name and I maintain an English/Traditional Chinese/Simplified Chinese website.
I've always wondered how one family/dynasty name starts and another ends, even outside of China. Like, did the first Baker just decide to adopt that family name because he became a baker despite him being born a Johnson? Did the Tang dynasty end because a nephew of the last emperor had him assassinated and felt Sui was a nice dynastic name for his new empire? Was there an era where people felt it cool to adopt random family names or the most popular family names, like some time in Vietnam's history (I'm taking about your ancestors, Nguyens). That sort of thing.
I was studying about the past dynasty, I found that my ancestors are from song dynasty between 960 and 1127 AD
using the balance of five elements & path of endeavour base on the BAZI of my son determined his name.
greetings from Malaysia
in Roman naming conventions: "Gaius" is the given name, the Praenomen- the the Nomen, "Julius" (Of the Gens, Julii), and "Caesar" is the Cognomen, which is descriptive of the individual or an ancestor.
In contrast to the Chinese attempts at uniqueness, Everyone is either named Gaius, Marius, etc. -in Julius Caesar's family, there are a lot of people named "Gaius Julius Caesar"
Thank you for this explanatory video. I had not previously known what a "courtesy name" was. I suppose the term is the same one that is also translated "style" in an old translation of "Dream of the Red Chamber."
Perfect Mandarin pronunciation!
Yes, it's perfect but a bit jarring to me, very strong Mainland flavor. Competitive, sharp, unpleasant for other speakers of Mandarin.
Very cool. I learned something today.
派字歌这段挺有意思，其实就是家谱里的辈分字，除了辈分字一样外，最后一个字有时候在同辈分的兄弟姐妹之间也会有关联性，比如 我的父亲 最后一个是字 文 我的叔叔 最后一个字是 武
One of the well-known persons who I knew with family poem is Confucius (Kong Zi), I met and noticed famous person named “Kong Qing xxx” or “Kong Ling xxx”
Excellent!
The generational name can also be the third character, not always the middle character.
老师真棒👍
My Chinese given name is 秀慧 and I like to joke that my parents named me Pretty Smart (it's really closer to "elegant [and] wise/knowledgeable", but Pretty Smart is funnier). Once at the beginning of the year in high school my mandarin teacher was doing roll call for the first time. She got to my name, called it out, paused, looked around until she found me, squinted for a bit, and then went "ok, 还可以" (not bad/passable). I died XD
Fun fact, 成 (chéng) means “to become”, “to turn into”. 龍 (lóng) is “dragon”. Thus, Jackie Chan’s Chinese stage name, 成龍 (Chénglóng), literally means “become dragon”. This is actually a bit of a pun/reference. Specifically, it is a reference to Bruce Lee, whose stage name was 小龍 (Xiǎolóng), or, “Little dragon”. So Jackie’s chosen stage name means both “become dragon”, and “become [like] Bruce Lee”.
There are several other names that someone can go by. 乳名: infancy name for when the parents want to wait until your personality is apparent to give you a name. 譜名: the name that will be recorded in your family tree. 訓名: The name that your teacher calls you because the teacher has hopes for you and both you and your parents generally respect that. 號: Titles or nicknames that you call yourself or others call you. 藝名: artistic name or stage name. And then there's your rank of the age in a generation of a family name that usually goes like surname+number that's usually known among your family's neighbors; For example 牛二, 張三, 李四.
Brother i was wondering if you can help me in some translation of word in real mandarin about bow because I reinstating my martial arts i want in Chinese command
Truly impressive! I am a Chinese from Singapore. My Chinese have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Very interesting for a native Chinese！It reminds me，perhaps the case of surnames in China is similar to that of given names in the West，whereas the Chinese given names are similar to the family names in the West，as far as the number of choices is concerned. John, Bob,Mike as to Li,Wang,Zhang. On the other hand, the sky is the limit as to our given names. Courtesy names are chosen by the person's father or grand father at his birth or by himself later and usually have the similar meaning to his given name, e.g. 诸葛亮字孔明，孔 here means big. 亮means bright--明.