#cql reference

[drwcn]

1/3 Hi! Congratulations on your residency, good luck! Hard work but I hope it goes very well. If you have time, I was wondering if you would mind helping me with an Untamed hypothetical? I've been reading about the duty of vengeance that JC has against the Wen, that after the LP massacre, culturally it was his duty to exterminate the Wen to pay them back. And clearly there were other clans that had this duty as well, because the Wen massacred a few clans iirc. Putting all the other motivations

2/3 for the war & extermination of the Wen aside (e.g. Jin clan's desire for Yin Iron) I'm curious whether there's any way this vengeance can be satisfied other than total extermination? Like, if WRH, WX and WC had all died before the end of the war and WQ ascended as overall sect leader to a clan that was nowhere near as wiped out, is there any way she can walk it all back? Can she offer reparations and gift the Nie some land and negotiate for a treaty to stop the war?

3/3 Or is it just going to be endless blood fued from there, no matter what? I'm really just interested in your opinion, no pressure! Thanks for your time <3

Hi! Thank! :) You kind of hit the nail on the head there. Because the Wen clan never really.... did anything to like stop WRH and such, that's why there wasn't really room for more politically saavy manuvers. Jiang Cheng and Yunmeng Jiang saw Qishan Wen as mortal enemies. To be honest, did the clans have round up the farmers and whatever? No. They didn't. If the Jins, who were political leaders at the end of the war, were more fair, they would have let the farmers go. Qishan Wen was screwed either way. But because the Jins, as leaders of the cultivation world, labelled ALL the Wens enemies, then it really puts the Jiangs in a tough spot. On one hand it's like...sure I know the 75 yro grandma had nothing to do with WRH, but on the other hand, am I really gonna make myself look like an asshole for defending the clan that slaughtered my parents and my clan. Do I even want to?

A little bit of historical background for clans being implicated in the crimes of select individuals. People criticize the treatment of Wen remnants because they were innocent, as in they didn't particiate in WRH's craziness. But in anicent china logic, that just doesn't track. The opposite of that would be: well you didn't do anything to stop him either? Why didn't you?

Of course we know well wtf could they have done, WRH was like... crazy and had the Yin Iron. But the counter argument would've been, you could've gone to any other major sect and reported him. And yes, they absolutely could have. And it would've been justified. There is a term called "大义灭亲" - loosely translating to "the greater rightouseness eliminates kinship". If you see your family, you blood, commit horrible moral crimes, it is "understandable" by ancient society if you do nothing, but the morally upright thing would still be to stop them, or at least do what you can to try to stop them. If you don't, then you're complacent, especially if you directly or indirectly benefiting from their morally abhorrent actions. Some crimes that has greater implications for society at large, if you don't stop your crime-committing family member, you will 100% be implicated in the event they get caught. Unless you can prove beyond the shadow of doubt that you had no idea this was even happening. As the ancient saying goes: 不知者无罪 ignorance is innocence.

In the case of the Wens, if Wen Ruohan had succeeded at annexing the other clans and established absolute control over their realm, then whether you're closely related Wen, or a distantly relatedly Wen, you will benefit. Your family "owns the world", so to speak. In the logic of ancient chinese society, if you don't try to stop WRH, for a crime as great as this, you are his abbettor.

And I'm not pulling this out of my ass. Real historical laws in ancient china allowed executions of clans to a greater or lesser extent depending on the crime. If the crime was something like...treason, and you were found out, then your family, including distant relations like third cousin twice removed could be killed. In the Christian bible I believe there is a passage that says sons are not persecuted for the crimes of the father. Well, that's Christian morals. Morals of ancient Chinese society is very different. There's literally a term 父债子换 which mean debts of the father are paid by the son.

So yeah, bringing the conversation to modern day, if Wen Qing had somehow contributed publically to overthrowing WRH, her side of the clan would've been saved. Or at least, it would've given people like LXC and NMJ reason to speak out for her. It's kind of like if you worked in a mafia, bu then you cut a deal with the feds and sell out the big boss, you get put into witness protection program. Same deal here.

[bindingandbonding]

MDZS cast of characters and their relations to one another.  

(courtesy name, birth name, title when applicable) 

[drwcn]

Chinese ppl just didn't use terms of endearment like "honey, sweetheart, my dear" until after the 20th century. To the anons and friends asking is there one that you can use that's not cringe, the answer is no there isn't. There. Is. No. Correct. Terms. Of. Endearment. In. Historical. Au.

It isn't used. There are no equivalents. Full stop.

[drwcn]

y’all understand that just because your husband randomly brought home a boy doesn’t mean you have to love the kid right? yu ziyuan doesn’t own wwx jack shit. 

not excusing her aggressive behaviour, but i’m saying of all her faults, not loving wwx was not one of them. 

[drwcn]

Hello, I hope you day it's going great! So, I'm currently in a writing proyect and I've been scrolling through your Tumblr for language adivces wich I'm very thankful and really appreciate for taking the time to explain. So, to the point; How does poetic names works in Chinese? I don't think someone actually explain it and I'm pretty curious. There are some steps? Or you just,, use the part that better sounds and goes with the character meaning? Or it's just too complicated for Non-Chinese people (And somekind disrespectful? I think??) Thank you again for your arduous work and I give you the best wishes for your life ^^✨

Hi friend!

Poetic names certainly aren't "too complicated for non-chinese people" lol. Nothing is too complicated to be explained; I think when/if people say that it's because it is a rather arduous process to explain it and maybe they just don't want to get into it.

But because I apparently hate sleep, I'm just gonna do it. LOL.

First, a little thing about Chinese poetry and how Chinese actually functions as a language. I can't really get into how to make poetic names without first explaining the basics. Of course there are many forms of poetry, but I think you're thinking along the lines of naming character based on historical and ancient poetry. Modern ones are a little bit more comprehensible and colloquial.

So first I'm gonna compare a Chinese poem "Begonia in the Fall" by Ji Xiaolan (b 1724, politician, philosopher, writer) to a section of one of my favourite poems by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (b. 1772, writer, theologian, philosopher), "Midnight Frost".

《秋海棠诗》

憔悴幽花剧可怜

斜阳院落晚秋天

词人老大风情减

犹对残花一怅然

"Midnight Frost"

[...]Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

You'll notice that a lot of Chinese poetry has exact number of characters in a verse with no punctuation. This is bc a) that's just the rule of that particular style of poem (there are other styles which doesn't demand it); b) ancient poetry was pretty much written in contracted language, as in, instead of saying "look how pretty the flower is", you say, "perceive flower beauty". This way you can express an entire paragraph in like... 8 words.

In comparison, for poems in English, even though the message of the poem might be muddled by metaphors and not very understandable to the people reading it, the grammar and - to a lesser extent - the syntax stay relatively the same as spoken language. Just because you're writing a poem doesn't mean you suddenly stop conjugating your verbs or dropping off "the"s and "an"s. That has to do with how English functions as a language. Each individual word has its set meaning and the language is bound by a more clear cut grammar.

Each individual character has its meaning, BUT when placed together with other characters, not only do new words form, but the meaning of the character itself can be distorted. A single character when used differently can be a noun or a verb or an adjective. Example: the character 生 sheng, by itself, means life (noun), to create/birth (verb) or raw (adjective).

Chinese grammar looks easy but is actually really fluid and suckie for learners. Chinese characters are words but also not-words. Each character can, in some cases, be a word by itself, but in everyday use actual "words" are more-often-than-not made up of more than one character. Example: dian 电 = electricity, nao 脑 = brain. But together, it means computer - electric brain. When a Chinese person says dian'nao, they're thinking about a computer, they're not thinking about electric brain.

生命 sheng ming: sheng = life (in the philosophical sense) ming = life (in the literal sense). Together they mean "living creature" or "life".

生孩子: sheng = to birth, haizi = child. Together it means to give birth to a baby.

BUT! 生气: sheng = to create; qi = air. Together it means to be angry. (yeah i know... lol)

生肉: sheng = raw; rou = meat.

Now that I got that out of the way, lemme go back to poetry. You can see now that what each character means has A LOT to do with the context that the rest of the sentence provides. When the language becomes contracted and shortened in a poem, it becomes VERY vague and hard to decipher, even for average Chinese people. Adding the fact that many of these poems are written by historical figures reflecting on events of the past and that the literal meaning of the poem maybe is a metaphor for another thing all together ....shit gets REAL complicated.

So how do Chinese people know/understand these poems? Simple answer: the very very very strict education system. Every child enrolled in school is MADE to read poems. I think there's a textbook for elementary children called 唐诗三百首 Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty. The book provides in the footnotes an explanation of the poem by literally dissecting the poem apart character by character. Not only does the education system make children learn the poem's meaning, they make you MEMORIZE them. As in when the bell rings and it's language class, Miss Teacher will call on any random poor third grader and says stand up and recite [insert poem name].

Memorizing poems has been a part of a robust language education in Chinese history since... the fucking dawn of time. It ain't going anywhere.

....

Yeah.

This is probably what people mean when they say, non-Chinese people will have a REALLY hard time choosing a poetic name. Because if you don't know how to read Chinese at all and you're just pulling random poems off the internet to try and guess at it's meaning....it's not gonna work.

Even I had a lot of trouble trying to find a poetic name for an OC. Most of my OC names are NOT poetic names. I didn't have an education in Chinese (I'm literally spewing Coleridge lol), so even for me it's like very very tasking to do this.

For me there's 2 options, the retrograde option or the anterograde option.

Anterograde option is: I have a sort of topic in mind. Let's say I want my character's name to mean Snow. Well okay I'll type in "poems in chinese about snow" and then see what I get. But that means I do have to sift through a BUNCH of poems, read them, understand what they're about, essentially decipher them, and then choose characters that sound nice together...which might not always work out.

But let's say you want to name your character after a more vague and nebulous idea like ambition or spirituality. How are you gonna find those poems?

The retrograde option is you think of a name FIRST and then you throw your name into google to look for poems containing the characters of the name. That's what I did for Jiang Yan (Jiang Yueqian 月千) in my au Midnight Sun.

Yue means moon and qian means thousand. I really liked the sound/flow of this name. I wanted to give it some meaning, but I searched and searched and I just couldn't find a poem that worked because like I said...I don't have a reservoir of poems in my head like kids who were educated in Chinese literature.

So finally I cracked and I just asked a friend. She's MUCH better at literature than I am and I said hey look, here's what I'm trying to do And she said oh Yueqian 月千, that's a nice name, reminds me of this particular poem.

Poet 范仲淹, 《岳阳楼记》

[...]

长烟一空 - when the smoke clears;

皓月千里 - the moon casts a thousand miles of light

浮光跃金 - which dances upon the water, golden

静影沉壁 - the shadow of the moon itself like jade underwater*

[...]

Idk if you're from the CQL fandom, but essentially the OC is a girl whose parents had her out of wedlock (her father doesn't know), and her maternal uncle hid her away for protection after her mother (who in canon is a male character that I had genderbent for The Tropes) died. TLDR: her mom is like this sorceress who summons smoke with her spells, her uncle lives in an area with a lot of water (river, lakes), and her father is known as the Second Jade.

The poem was SO PERFECT. It had everything I wanted. But never in my LIFE could I have gotten to this poetic explanation of my OC's name if I didn't have my friend's help, and I speak Chinese FLUENTLY. I couldn't even get to this if I had asked my parents for help because they studied literature in school like eons ago and they're both in STEM. My friend however enjoys Chinese literature and could pull it up on command. Even then, she had to think about it.

It's just soo much labour. That's why only good Chinese writers have really poetic names. That's why parents before naming their kids literally browse poetry books and dictionaries. It's a really hard process and it's really not feasible to ask other people unless you're really good friends with them and it's a one time thing.

So at the end of the day, having a poetic name in Chinese doesn't just require literacy and comprehension, it requires a certain level of dedicated training in historical literature.

[drwcn]

hello, hello ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ sorry to bother, i just have some questions: provided that both Qin Su and Jiang Yanli are in the Lanling Jin clan at the same time, would they both be called Jin-xiao-furen? Would they perhaps be distinguished by number (such as er-xiao-furen or something)? And also when Jin-furen (JGS's wife) would become the Dowager Madam Jin and Jiang Yanli would become Jin-furen on JZX's ascension as Sect Leader, would Qin Su then stay Jin-xiao-furen? | •́ ▾ •̀ |

Right yes!

Okay so if there are more than one...

It really depends on the dynasty, typically xiao-furen 小夫人 or shao-furen 少夫人 isn't really use if there are multiple daughter-in-law in the family. Instead, we typically see the term shao-nainai 少奶奶 being used.

Yes, nainai means grandma, but shao-nainai doesn't mean "young grandma" - it means wife of a younger master.

(I know, I know, chinese is just like that lol)

So for Jiang Yanli and Qin Su, assuming Jin Zixuan is older, then Jiang Yanli would be da-shao'nainai 大少奶奶 , and Qin Su would be er-shao'nainai 二少奶奶

When Jiang Yanli becomes 'furen', Qin Su would be "Jin-er-furen". It's a bit messy...

[drwcn]

Okay, I have a little question. Let's imagine that Wei Wuxian is the son of a concubine, what should she call her father's main wife, her own mother a concubine, and the other concubines?

I have been waiting 84 years for ppl to take more interest in harem culture. 

Not that I want a harem culture, I just find them so delightful and antiquated. They make for such juicy, juicy drama. 

The term “mother” is reserved for the wife of the father. Nobody else in the family is “mother” to the children. Now I’m gonna use the Jins as an example because Jin Guangshan fucks, and fucking has consequences. 

(You will get pregnant. And die. Well okay, maybe not die, but actually you might. Pregnancy is wild) 

Let’s say Jin Guangshan married Madam Jin, and then took on Meng Shi and Mo Xuanyu’s mother as his concubines. For the sake of this example, let’s name her Mo Yun. 

To ALL the children aka Jin Zixuan, Meng Yao, Mo Xuanyu: 

Jin Guangshan = Father, fuqin 父亲  Madam Jin, the Main Madam= Mother, muqin 母亲

This is the most filial address. Now, in some families, the children may not prefer to call the Main Madam as Mother (bc they don’t have a good relationship for so many reasons), in this case, they may refer to Madam Jin as furen 夫人 (my lady or your ladyship) or da’niangzi 大娘子 (main madam). 

To Mo Xuanyu & Meng Yao

Madam Jin = Mother muqin 母亲 , My Lady furen 夫人 , Main Madam  da’niangzi 大娘子

To a child of a concubine, their own biological mother is their xiao-niang -> Little Mother. That is in fact what they are supposed to call their mother, even in private. It is the most “truly filial” and rule abiding way of address. Of course, many children don’t do this. In private they will refer to their mother as “a-niang” which is the more intimate term, like ‘Mum’. In public, they will use “xiao-niang” because it’s a matter of manner and propriety. 

Mo Xuanyu and Meng Yao to their own mother: 

a’niang 阿娘 - in private

xiao-niang 小娘 - in public 

When any children address a concubine who is not their own mother: 

Last Name - xiao-niang

Jin Zixuan & Meng Yao will call Mo Yun -> Mo-xiao’niang 莫小娘

Jin Zixuan & Mo Xuanyu will call Meng Shi -> Meng-xiao’niang 孟小娘

Jin Zixuan can of course call Madam Jin Mother (muqin) or Mum (a’niang), because he can. He is a legitimate child and his mother is the legal wife. 

:)

[drwcn]

Hi! I was wondering, in a modern AU, what would WWX call the Jiangs? Let's assume that he's allowed to call YZY 'Aunt Yu' and JFM 'Uncle Jiang'. Would he call JYL and JC 'cousin'? Would he call them jiejie and didi (since shijie and shidi aren't happening) at all? Or would that still be a case of disregarding his birth parents? Personally I'd probably still have him call them JC and Yanli to make it easier, but I was wondering about other options. I'm assuming he'd have to be legally adopted.

Jiang Fengmian - Jiang shushu

Yu Ziyuan - Yu-yi, or Yu-ayi or.... technically if he calls Jiang Fengmiang shushu, he should call Yu Ziyuan, Yu-shenshen, (or if he's northern) Yu-shen'er.

He would never call JYL and JC his cousins. I know like... your uncle's kids are your cousins and that makes sense in English, but in Asian culture literally every older male is a uncle and every older female is an auntie, and that's different from your actual aunts and uncles. The words for cousin is very specifically for people who are related to you by blood.

100% he'd call JC by his name no doubt.

JYL, he would probably call her Yanli-jie. Him calling her by her name (especially if they grew up together and she'd always been a big sister figure to him) would be kind of offensive at worst and weird at best.

I remember distinctively when I went to visit family in China after immigrating to Canada, and I saw my cousins (actual cousins) for the first time in years. They're all older than me by quite a couple years so they always knew me as their little meimei (they'd call me by my name of course, that's just what you did with ppl who were lower than you in the family hierarchy). But I'd gotten so used to calling everyone by name that I just called them by name too.

And then my aunt asked my dad if that's how people did things overseas because one of my cousins had wondered why I stopped calling them gege and jiejie and that was quite jarring to them. They were kind of hurt, so now I only call them jie and ge etc.

Legal custody in China doesn't really change how you'd call your new guardians, especially if they are already someone in your life before your parents died. Like if your grandparents got custody of you after your parents died, they'd still be your grandparents. Just because they adopted you doesn't mean you're their child. You're still their grandchild.

I know that's not always the case in other places. I'm Canadian, and when I was in my pediatric rotation, I brushed path with CAS quite frequently. It always kind of befuddled me that for some families, when grandmothers get custody of their grandkid, they refer to themselves as the kid's new mum.

Coming back to CQL, JFM and YZY would never try to replace WWX's actual parents because they were already acquainted with CSSR and WCZ. They would stay as his "shushu" and "ayi" even if they get custody of him. It would be very weird if wwx called them his mom and dad.

Of course if WWX was adopted by strangers things would be different. Say like ... idk Jin Guangshan got bonked on the head and grew a conscience and decided to adopt some random orphan from nowhere, WWX would be expected to call Jin Guangshan dad.