A guide to Chinese names, as understood by a Chinese person
Ever struggle with coming up with names for your Chinese OCs in fanfics? Ever been confused which part is the first name and which is the surname? Ever not realized two names actually correlate to the same character? Well struggle no more as I try my very hardest to non-verbosely break down Chinese naming, all while maybe sprinkling in some meta about danmei novels because I can.
Is this a very solidly researched, evidence backed post? Nope, this is mostly a summary of my own personal knowledge plus Wikipedia plus me scouring Chinese forums to point my way to historical records. I don’t pretend to understand everything related to this subject, because there’s just sooooo much to know, but I’ll try my best! Feel free to point out any errors and missing things.
This will mention a lot of details regarding the different considerations when choosing names, some of which is outdated, so if you’re only interested in like the basic details you can skip like the second half of this post. Also also, this applies to Han Chinese only!!!! Other ethnic groups have different names and cultures surrounding them.
Basic Naming and Language Stuff
Since the written Chinese language uses logograms (individual characters to represent different things/ideas, combining them to represent other things), there is no such thing as a designated ‘name word’ (like Anna, Mark, Jason), which is why online name generators for Chinese names suck. Think of names like Rain, Lily, Hope etc. if they weren’t capitalized, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them and normal words, except that in Chinese there is literally no way to tell just by looking at the characters in isolation (it’s very obvious in context though). The character for Xie Lian from tgcf has a first name 怜 (lián), which could be a variety of things but I’ll put the definition as to sympathize. This is the exact character one would use in a sentence like I sympathize with him. Of course, there are certain characters that are basically only used in names, but they are not strictly for names only, people just tend to use more special characters.
First names can be any length of characters technically, but the most common ones are one character or two characters. However, when addressing a person, usually a minimum of two characters is used, so if someone has a one character first name then they are usually addressed by their full name, or by a two-character nickname (can be done by doubling a character, or adding a certain character. This also works for two character names). Generally, people can be addressed using different titles attached to their surname, typically related to their profession (if there was lawyer with last name Zhang, you would address them as ‘Lawyer Zhang’) or their relationship to you (a woman a few years older than you can be addressed as ‘Jie’, although this can be a bit casual).
Now, for Xie Lian, Lian is his first name, Xie is his surname. Notice that the surname comes first. Like first names, they can be everyday characters or ‘commonly for names’ characters, however there are only certain characters used for family names (at least “naturally”, since you could technically pick a random last name but it’s not really a thing). Surnames are most commonly one character (e.g., Zhang, Wang, Lin, Li) but they can be two characters (e.g., Duanmu, Ouyang, Zhangsun, Shangguan). Longer surnames are likely not Han.
It’s entirely possible for two people to have the same romanized name but have their names be entirely different (due to different tones and homophones). For example, one person’s surname could be Wang (王) and the other’s could be Wang (汪). Just by romanization, you can’t tell that these are actually pronounced very differently since no one uses accents in English writing lmao. Or, the surnames Wei 魏 vs Wei 卫 or Jiang 江 vs Jiang 姜 which are pronounced the exact same and only differ by character.
Naming Traditions and Conventions
The Chinese term for ‘name’ is 名字 (míng zì), however, historically 名 and 字 were two different things, although in modern day there is no distinction and everyone just has one name.
名 is the name given at birth. It was typically only used by elders or people close to the person, like parents, or people more powerful than the person, like an Emperor. Shen Xu states in Zuo Zhuan (a commentary on a historical record, I’m doing a very very rough translation) five ways to name someone: using circumstances/events surrounding or near birth, lucky/auspicious characters, the features of the child, the names of things in the world, or characters related to the father. As well, children should not be named using names of states (this was a period when China was broken into many vassals), titles of public officials, names of mountains and rivers (or large geographical bodies in general I think), names of diseases, and names of ritualistic objects and sacrificial goods. According to Yili, an etiquette and rites book, this name is given three months after birth.
字 is the ‘courtesy’ or ‘style’ name, and it is used by people who aren’t supposed to use the 名. According to Liji, another etiquette and rites book, this is given to men when they turn 20 and women when they turn 15 (and for women specifically only after they’re engaged). Coming up with this name is very important, and there are many ways to do it: it can incorporate and expand upon the birth name, like the poet Li Bai (李白) and his courtesy name Li Taibai (李太白); it can have a relation to the birth name, for example the ‘Yun’ (昀) character in spl Gu Yun’s (顾昀) name means sunlight, while the ‘Xi’ (熹) character in his courtesy name Zixi (子熙) refers to the light of dawn; it can mention the birth order of the child; it can connect with the birth name to form a phrase; it can show a cause and effect relationship; it can be opposite of the birth name. The courtesy name has mostly gone out of fashion, but it was a thing until like early 20th century.
Since last and first name are typically presented together, it is not unusual for characters to have their surnames ‘connected’ to their first names, whether intentionally or not. Qiu Haitang (秋海棠) is a good one: 秋, her last name, means autumn, and 海棠 is the name for the begonia flower, so put together it would make her name mean something like “a begonia in autumn.” Jiang Cheng’s (江澄) name also works here: 江 means river, and 澄 can mean the process of water turning clear and all the particles settling and stuff.
Another interesting way to name characters is by referencing classical poetry. For example, Jiang Fengmian (江枫眠) likely comes from a line in a famous poem by Zhang Ji: 江枫渔火对愁眠. Some other characters I can think of (likely) named this way would be Xu Qichen, Jiang Ting (and his alias Lu Chengjiang, which both come from the same poem lmao what a nerd), Lan Wangji. References to other pieces of literature, such as Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian and Neo-Confucian texts.
Distinguishing between generations was and still is very important in Chinese culture, and a way that they used to do it was through their names. For one character names, the characters themselves could have a connection. Let’s look at the Lan siblings from mdzs: Lan Huan (蓝涣) and Lan Zhan (蓝湛). Notice how the characters of their names (涣 and 湛) share a common left part, from which we can note that both of the characters connect to water somehow (just a bit I did dictionary it). A more common way of doing things is having a two character name, with one shared character for the children of the generation: Jin Zixuan (金子轩) and Jin Zixun (金子勋), Jin Rulan (金如兰) and Jin Rusong (金如松) (take what you want from the fact that Meng Yao’s name was changed to Jin Guangyao instead of Jin Ziyao). I believe it’s more common for this ‘generation character’ to be the first character of the name, although it can be the second character: Yuanchun (元春), Yingchun (迎春), Xichun (惜春), and Tanchun (探春) of the Jia family from Hong Lou Meng, for example. The differentiated characters can form a phrase or message (as is the case with the Jia girls above), or the characters used for the generation can connect with characters from other generations.
Characters that sound like the names of Imperial family members, like the Emperor or the Empress, are basically, and if a character in your name coincides with someone important then you gotta change it. When writing names of these ‘higher people’ (most commonly, parents), one could remove a few strokes from the characters in order to avoid them, as a means of respect.
Now, if you really want to get detailed, we can talk a bit about 生辰八字 (shēngchén bāzì), which is really just a birthday (year, month, day, time). In folk religion and culture, it is used to predict how the rest of one’s life will go, and ways to avoid misfortune and such. I don’t fully understand it, but basically based on this you can calculate like which elements you have an abundance of/affinity for and which ones you lack (the five elements are metal, wood, water, fire, and earth). You can then find out what types of characters are suitable for your name: for example, based on my birthday, I lack water, so to remedy for that my parents could’ve named me using characters related to water.
Some miscellaneous info and thoughts:
In folk culture, the number of brush strokes in the characters of a name could mean bad/good luck
A nickname used by parents and elders to address a child when they are young is called a ‘milk name’
You can have more than one courtesy name
You typically don’t name after people
People can be named after numbers, or ‘numbering sets’ (like first, second, third). This might be used by writers for background characters.
Girls are commonly named with characters that have the 女 radical (女 is the character for female). Uncommon characters with this radical are usually very specific adjectives used to describe women
The amount of puns that can be conjured is incredible omg
The Chinese characters for the elements on the periodic table nearly all have the 金 radical, indicating metal. According to the very reliable source of my dad, these characters came from the Ming dynasty, where all the members of the royal family had to be named with characters that contained that radical, so they just started slapping it next to random characters once they ran out
Doubling a character is sometimes a proper name for a girl (e.g., Weiwei, Yingying, Lili), but I haven’t see it for boys
I probably missed quite some stuff while making this post but yeah those are some of the things about Chinese naming that I know of. Any thoughts?
