Chinese Names
This essay is the same on the pages of all 6 countries that use the tradition, and what differs between them, their registers and their rankings, is on those pages.
Chinese personal names are written with Chinese characters, the product of a roughly logosyllabic ideographic-phonetic writing system in which a character generally represents one syllable that may be a word or morpheme. The typical name has three parts that are also three syllables, three morphemes, and three characters. Because there is no lexical category reserved for given names: all Chinese words, names included, are built from the same stock of meaningful morphemes; names are predominantly semantically transparent and retain their lexical meaning, and no graphic device (such as capitalization) sets a name apart from ordinary words. China was the first country to use family names; family names were recorded around the tenth century BC, and the inventory has grown from the roughly thirty earliest names on Bronze Inscriptions to about 6,000 today (Li Zhonghua), though only about 930 surnames are in contemporary use (Zhu & Millward).
Zhu De
- Zhu
- Family — Zhu (state name)
- De
- Given — De
A worked example from the naming-practices survey; hover or tap a part to see its role.
Structure & order
The family name (xing-shi) comes first, reflecting the importance of family in individual identity; the given name follows. The full traditional order is surname + generation name + given name.
[FAMILY] [GENERATION] [GIVEN]
Variants noted by Zhu & Millward:
- Some people have a two-syllable (two-character) surname, or a two-syllable given name.
- Some have no generation name (e.g. the author Zhu Bin).
- Four-syllable names occur: a two-syllable surname plus either a two-syllable given name, or a one-syllable generation name plus a one-syllable given name.
This general-to-specific ordering parallels Chinese address-writing order (country–province–city–street–individual), the reverse of European convention.
Given names
The given name carries true individuality; neither surname nor generation name is personal, since both are predetermined. Given names are drawn freely from the lexicon and chosen for meaning, so opportunities for creativity exceed those of the fixed English given-name pool. Zhu & Millward group most given-name semantics into eight fields:
- Fame, achievement, ability: Wei 'achievement', Zhe 'wisdom', Ying-cai 'great talents' (e.g. Chiang Kai-shek's sons Jing-guo / Wei-guo, together 'to run the country').
- Intellectual & moral qualities: Zhi 'intelligent', De 'virtue', Yong 'courageous', Xiao 'filial piety'; Shu 'kind and gentle' and Zhen 'chastity' used mainly for females.
- Money & wealth: Bao 'treasure', Jin 'gold', Yu 'jade' (used less today).
- Longevity: Chang-sheng 'long life', Bai-sui 'one hundred years old' (used less today).
- Physical beauty, mainly female: Mei 'beautiful', Xiang 'fragrant', Li 'pretty', Hua 'flower'.
- Symbolic qualities: Ying 'eagle', Hu 'tiger', Long 'dragon', Feng 'phoenix', Hai 'sea'.
- Desire for additional children, formerly common: Zhao-di 'ask for a brother', Pan-di 'hope for a brother'.
- Commemorative, events tied to birth: Bei-sheng 'born in Peking', Ya-fei 'Asia-Africa'.
Gender is marked by lexical choice rather than a fixed list: delicate characters for females, characters of masculinity, strength, and good luck for males (Li Zhonghua). Li Zhonghua names four main types of given name: five-element oriented, generation, birth-order (a character with numerical function), and patronymic-linkage (the last/middle character of a father's name begins the son's given name, repeated down the line). "Fad" names appear (1950s female names in -na imitating Russian Anna Karenina). Within a nuclear family, same-sex siblings' given names usually follow a meaningful pattern (e.g. the four sisters Yuan-Chun / Ying-Chun / Tan-Chun / Xi-Chun in A Dream of Red Mansions).
Family names & patronymics
The surname normally identifies the father's family and is inherited; since Liberation a child may take either parent's surname, so full siblings can bear different surnames (Zhu & Millward). Main sources of family names (Li Zhonghua): clan totems, names of a feudal holding/state, ancestors' occupation, ancestral habitations, clan names adopted as surnames, posthumous titles of rulers, names conferred by a ruler, and minority-nationality names. Zhu & Millward classify them into five categories:
- Locality: state lived in (Qi, Lu, Zhou, Chen), city (Zhu, Lin, Han), or part of a locality (Xi-men 'west gate').
- Relationship: no true patronymics (no equivalent of Johnson/MacDougall); some surnames were an ancestor's given name (Shan 'mountain', Mao 'hair').
- Occupation: nobility rank (Gong 'duke'), official position (Si-ma 'defense minister'), trade (Tao 'potter'); occupation-per-se is sparse (no equivalent of Smith).
- Nicknames: plants (Yang 'poplar', Liu 'willow'), domestic animals (Ma 'horse', Niu 'ox'), minerals (Jin 'gold', Yu 'jade'), colours (Huang 'yellow', tied to the Yellow Emperor), and "Emperor's favours" (surnames granted by a ruler, e.g. Zhang).
- Phonetic transliterations of non-Chinese names (Hu-yan, Yu-wen), including many two-character surnames; some surnames mark groups (Piao, Jin among Koreans; Bai among Moslems).
Surnames are highly skewed: per the 1982 census the top three are Li (7.9% of the Han population), Wang (7.4%), and Zhang (7.1%) (Zhu & Millward). There is no gender suffix on surnames and no equivalent of Western hyphenated surnames; a married woman never adopts her husband's surname today.
How to address someone
- It is a serious offense to violate address rules; in a same-surname village an old man may address a small child as "uncle" by generation rank (Zhu & Millward).
- Historically a person had a ming 名 (one-character given name, assigned ~3 months by the father) and, on reaching adulthood (girls at 15, boys at 20), a two-character zi 字. The ming was used by oneself or a senior; the zi by juniors, peers, or strangers; addressing a senior or stranger by ming was a breach of etiquette. The courteous form is ming-zi + title, or, more respectfully, title alone (Mao Zi-dong addressed as "Chairman"). Today the ming/zi split is obsolete and ming-zi 名字 simply means "given name".
- A married/unmarried woman may keep her birth family name and given name; formerly she could be addressed in formal situations as Madame/Lady/Mrs. + husband's surname (Zhu & Millward; Li Zhonghua).
Pitfalls for software
- Surname-first ordering is mandatory; the cliché "they put their last names first" misreads the surname as the most important part placed first, not last.
- Romanization loses information. Pinyin spelling collapses many distinctions: Chinese has many homophones but few homographs, and pinyin normally omits tone. The same character-name may be written Zhang, Chang, Jang, Jong, Chong, Jeung, etc. by different Chinese; there are at least five distinct rising-tone surnames Yu. Speakers disambiguate spoken names by naming the radicals, by citing a familiar word containing the character, by exchanging name cards, or by "writing" the character on the palm.
- Names retain lexical meaning, so they can form phrases or whole sentences (e.g. Ma Shi-tu = 'the horse knows the way') and parents avoid characters open to mocking folk-etymology or tone-altered puns (e.g. Yang Fen 'fragrance' twisted to 'sheep's dung').
- The generation can live in the written character, not the spoken syllable: a shared radical, invisible in romanization, may be the only generation marker.
- Naming after relatives is taboo (Li Zhonghua); the Chinese do not assign a child the given name of parents, relatives, close friends, or celebrities (Zhu & Millward).
- Many other names exist: hao 号 (self-assigned literary name, pre-1911, often tied to a place, basis of modern pen-names), childhood names (often reduplicated final syllable, Ping-ping, or Xiao- + name; birth-order Da-mao/Er-mao; humble names like Xiao-gou 'little dog' for longevity), and epithet names (surname + descriptive term, e.g. "Wang the Pockmarked").
All worked examples
| Full name | Family | Generation | Given | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zhu De | Zhu (state name) | — | De | Marshal-General; no generation name |
| Mao Ze-dong | Mao ('hair', ancestor's given name) | — | Ze-dong | zi was Run-zhi, run sharing the 'water' radical with dong |
| Si-ma Qian | Si-ma (two-syllable, 'defense minister') | — | Qian | author of Records of the Historian |
| Jia Yuan-Chun | Jia (state name) | (plant-radical generation marker) | Yuan-Chun ('first spring') | one of four sisters: Yuan/Ying/Tan/Xi-Chun |
Horoscope & auspicious selection
A person's constitution and fate are held to be predetermined by the bāzì 八字 ('Eight Characters'): eight characters in four pairs marking the year, month, day, and hour of birth, each pair a cyclical sign from the tiāngān 天干 ('Heavenly Stems') and dìzhī 地支 ('Earthly Branches'). These connect to the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals (shēngxiào 生肖 / shŭxiang 属相) and the Five Elements (wŭxíng 五行: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth). A fortune-teller or name-master studies the Eight Characters; if an element is missing, a name is created to "correct the deficiency" and make the person complete. Elements may appear as a whole/part of a character, as the stroke count, or via phonetic value. The naming may target the lexical meaning, the phonetic value, or the graphical elements/radicals of the characters (Kałużyńska).
The shēngxiào fă (zodiac method) builds names compatible with the animal of the birth year. Simplest forms use the animal name itself (Niú 'Ox', Lóng 'Dragon') or an animal plus a lexeme (Fēilóng 'Flying Dragon'). More often, characters are chosen for radicals/structural parts suited to the animal. For the Year of the Rat (paired with Earthly Branch zĭ 子 and element Water), favourable radicals include grass/grain (căo 艹, hé 禾, rats eat grains), meat-related parts (xīn 心 'heart', ròu 肉), roof/hole shelter parts (mián 宀, kŏu 口), grooming parts (silk sī 纟, cloth jīn 巾), 'king/ruler' parts (wáng 王: Rat is first in the cycle), and branches in good relation to zĭ (shēn 申/Monkey, chén 辰/Dragon, hài 亥/Pig, chŏu 丑/Ox). Avoided: sun/light parts (rì 日: rats are nocturnal), snake-resembling parts (chuò 辶, gōng 弓), human parts (rén 人, rats fear people), and opposed branches/elements (wŭ 午/Horse, huŏ 火 'fire' since Water opposes Fire, yáng 羊/Goat).
Generation names
A device with no Western equivalent. Forms of address depend on age (different surnames) or generation (same surname), so a system was devised to track generations: all members of one generation share a name element. Ancestors of a clan select a group of auspicious characters, and each successive generation is assigned one in turn (males and females alike); the sequence sometimes forms a poem. Alternatively the generation marker is a shared radical inside each member's given name (e.g. the plant radical across Jia Qin/Qiang/Yun/Rong in A Dream of Red Mansions), so one must know the written form to read the generation. Large families keep zu-pu 族谱 (generation books) recording these names. Generation names are no longer universal, fading in cities, retained in villages and rural areas (Zhu & Millward; Li Zhonghua).
Where these names are used
The commonest given names and surnames of each, from its official register where one exists.
Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Chinese Names”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/tradition/chinese.