taiwanese indie band rec of the week is soulfa靈魂沙發！got to see them live a week ago in taipei, it was awesome :,-) fav songs rn are probably 夏日午睡 & 44 Seconds Road Movie
Book of the Week: Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage
Author: Qian Shan Cha Ke (千山茶客)
Genre: ancient setting, josei
Rating: M (very mature, dark themes but not too graphic of depictions)
My Synopsis: What happens when a girl gets tired of being nice and decides to go apeshit? You get Shen Miao, our adorable 30+ year-old protagonist recently stuffed back into her 14-year-old self and ready to eat the flesh and drink the blood of her enemies! Using this new lease on life, she’ll methodically and maliciously ruin every antagonist’s life using the tools in her versatile skillset, including: knowledge of the future, a psychological understanding of assholes, weaponized gender stereotypes, and men. And lest we forget our love interest, Xie Jing Xing: the boy/man (cause god forbid the author know how old anyone BUT Shen Miao is…) who thought he had it all figured out until he discovered that Shen Miao is a horny drunk. See just how far they’ll go to bathe in the blood of their enemies while keeping their loved ones safe in this very long but extremely satisfying novel.
My Actual Review: It’s so satisfying to see a previously downtrodden character scheme her way into a happy ending, and Shen Miao fucking deserves it. Some reviews that I’ve seen have claimed that the LI eventually takes over her revenge schemes, but I didn’t see it. They just partner up and she uses his manpower to do what she wants. There are also places where their separate goals intersect, so it just makes more sense for him to do the cleanup. The thing about Shen Miao is that she has no issues with letting others do the work for her, especially if it’s against people she wasn’t invested in putting work against to begin with. It’s the empress in her, I fear. As for the main pair as a couple, I loved their every interaction, and their descent into romance felt natural and gratifying. Greatest thing about this romance is the fact that it truly kicks off because Xie Jing Xing did not know to guard against horny drunk Shen Miao lmao!
The translation is pretty good outside of some clunky grammar, but once you train your eyes to glaze over the the five-millionth time the translator inserts directly into the story to complain about how often the LI is described as hot (unlike every other character, I guess???) as if this book is their early 2000s fanfic, it gets even better! Another thing that may or may not be here nor there is that this author is really weird with age consistency. Like, “MC is forever un-aging while everyone else ages 2 years every few months” weird. Shen Miao is forever 14 until the time skip in which she is forever 16, while Xie Jing Xing goes from “the same age as the students” to “17/18ish” to “vaguely in his 20s” during the same course of time where we literally never see Shen Miao acknowledge a birthday in any year. As for more serious content warnings, this story involves underage relationships (including non-explicit sex, marriage, and pregnancy), rape as a weapon, (assumed) incest between cousins, child abuse, and described but not explicitly shown torture. Though there are some humorous parts, this is not a lighthearted story. Read if you want something dark with an ultimate happy ending.
Translation: complete
重生之将门毒后 The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage By: Qian Shan Cha Ke (千山茶客) A short post on all the summary and teasers tha
10 traditional characters that I didn't know existed
In 2023 I started learning to write traditional characters by hand, so I've been paying extra attention to differences between traditional and simplified forms. In some cases, I didn't even realize the traditional and simplified forms were different!
Here are 10 sets of simplified and traditional characters with subtle differences, 8 of which I only discovered recently. Definitions are adapted from MDBG.
（1）抛 | 拋 pāo
The difference is SO subtle with this one. I have to hold the screen 3 inches from my face to see it. The simplified version has 7 strokes, but the traditional version has 8.
抛 | 拋 pāo - to throw / to toss / to fling / to cast / to abandon
抛弃 | 拋棄 pāoqì - to abandon / to discard / to renounce / to dump (sb)
抛开 | 拋開 pāokāi - to throw out / to get rid of
抛物线 | 拋物線 pāowùxiàn - parabola
（2）滚 | 滾 gǔn
I actually prefer the traditional version, particularly when I'm writing by hand. When I write the simplified version, the 衣 strokes on the bottom always looks awkward under 公 to me.
滚 | 滾 gǔn - to boil / to roll / to take a hike / get lost!
摇滚 | 搖滾 yáogǔn - rock 'n' roll (music) / to rock / to fall off
滚开 | 滾開 gǔnkāi - to boil (of liquid) / boiling hot / Get out! / Go away!
滚烫 | 滾燙 gǔntàng - boiling / scalding
打滚 | 打滾 dǎgǔn - to roll about
（3）匀 | 勻 yún
I think these look pretty much the same when handwritten, but on the computer they are distinct. I definitely prefer how the simplified one looks.
匀 | 勻 yún - even / well-distributed / uniform / to distribute evenly / to share
均匀 | 均勻 jūnyún - even / well-distributed / homogeneous / well-proportioned (figure, body etc)
（4）叙 | 敘 xù
叙 | 敘 xù - to narrate / to chat
叙述 | 敘述 xùshù - to relate (a story or information) / to tell or talk about / to recount / narration / telling / narrative / account
叙事 | 敘事 xùshì - narrative
（5）奥 | 奧 ào
奥 | 奧 ào - obscure / mysterious
It really bugs me that 奥 has a different traditional form, but 澳 (as in 澳门 Macao) does not!
深奥 | 深奧 shēn'ào - profound / abstruse / recondite / profoundly
奥运会 | 奧運會 Àoyùnhuì - Olympic Games; the Olympics (abbr. for 奥林匹克运动会 | 奧林匹克運動會)
奥利给 | 奧利給 àolìgěi - come on, you can do it!
Other similar cases:
厮 | 廝 sī - (bound form) together; each other / (bound form) male servant / (bound form) dude; so-and-so
厢 | 廂 xiāng - box (in theater) / side room / side
厦 | 廈 shà - tall building / mansion / rear annex / lean-to / also pr. xià
（7）刹 | 剎 chà/shā
Whether the bottom looks like 朩 or 木 seems to be somewhat stylistic and can vary by font. But the little 点 is a consistent difference.
刹 | 剎 chà - used to transcribe several words originally from Sanskrit
刹那 | 剎那 chànà - an instant (Sanskrit: ksana); split second; the twinkling of an eye
刹 | 剎 shā - to brake
刹车 | 剎車 shāchē - to brake (when driving) / to stop / to switch off / to check (bad habits) / a brake
Other similar cases:
宫 | 宮 gōng - palace / temple / castration (as corporal punishment) / first note in pentatonic scale
吕 | 呂 lǚ - pitchpipe, pitch standard, one of the twelve semitones in the traditional tone system / surname Lǚ
（9）别 | 別 bié
I've known about the traditional form of this character for a while now, but to be honest, it still looks like 别 written incorrectly to me...sorry.
别 | 別 bié - to leave; to part (from) / (literary) to differentiate; to distinguish / (bound form) other; another; different / don't …! / to fasten with a pin or clip / to stick in; to insert (in order to hinder movement) / (noun suffix) category
差别 | 差別 chābié - difference; distinction; disparity
分别 | 分別 fēnbié - to part; to leave each other / to distinguish; to tell apart / difference; distinction / in different ways; differently / separately; individually
区别 | 區別 qūbié - difference / to distinguish / to discriminate / to make a distinction
性别 | 性別 xìngbié - gender / sex
个别 | 個別 gèbié - individually; one by one / just one or two; exceptional; rare
（10）丢 | 丟 diū
OK, I literally just realized there are separate simplified and traditional forms for this character while working on this post 😭 I feel utterly betrayed.
丢 | 丟 diū - to lose / to put aside / to throw
丢脸 | 丟臉 diūliǎn - to lose face / humiliation
丢人 | 丟人 diūrén - to lose face
丢掉 | 丟掉 diūdiào - to lose / to throw away / to discard / to cast away
丢失 | 丟失 diūshī - to lose; to misplace
跟丢 | 跟丟 gēndiū - to lose track of
See similar posts:
Characters I used to write incorrectly
Characters that look TOO similar
Traditional characters that haunt me
Mimi Meow (咪咪喵) is a character created by Lin Rongsheng, the owner of a gas station in Tamsui. After noticing how many trucks traveling to and from Tamsui would get into traffic accidents at busy intersections, Rongsheng started to paint Mimi Meow on streetlights and walls, hoping that it would cause drivers and pedestrians to pay more attention to their surroundings.
Local residents and students have joined in the creation by making Mimi Meow doppelgangers, highlighting dangerous areas and pointing tourists to Tamsui's local scenery and cultural features.
Image 1:
小心來車！- Be aware of incoming traffic!
Image 3:
勿入無燈地 - Don't enter unlit areas
慢跑 - Jog/walk slowly
結伴同行! - Go together!
以利呼救! - Call for help!
bit of a long one today, found an interesting article on the taiwanese accent written by 小熊 on zhihu and thought i'd translate some! (not a direct translation, pulled in some info from other sources & my own comments on it as well)
what is the taiwanese accent?
first, there's a distinction to be made between taiwanese mandarin and a taiwanese accent. taiwanese mandarin combines hokkien and japanese, has less “standard” pronunciation, and is most often used by the older generation; for example:
“你要不要氣高雄玩？” -- 去 [qù] -> 氣 [qì]
“素這樣子噢？” -- 是 [shì] -> 素 [sù]
“這就素台灣狗蟻啦” -- 口音 [kǒuyin] -> 狗蟻 [gǒuyǐ]
otoh, the taiwanese accent is the way of speaking that many find warm/sweet (many tv series will have at least One Female Character playing up this accent to act cute). the accent has the following characteristics:
(1) linking sounds (連音)
people will frequently combine two words into a single breath, like:
“真的假的” -> “zhenn假的”
“不要這樣子啦” -> “不要 jiàng子啦”
“那樣很討厭耶” -> "niàng很討厭耶"
(2) less obvious retroflex (不明顯的捲舌)
because hokkien does not have retroflex sounds, tw accent falls somewhere in the middle of curling and not curling the tongue, making “zh, ch, sh” (and r) sound like “z, c, s”:
“你要不要癡？” -- 吃 [chī] -> 疵 [cī]
“四不四！” -- 是 [shī] -> 四 [sī]
“额且啊⋯⋯” -- 而 [ér] -> 額 [é]
taiwanese do not use 兒化 (i.e. adding "兒” to the ends of words like 一點兒， 好玩兒)
(3) no distinction between “ang, eng, ing” and “an, en, in”
"這個婉路真的很難用耶" -- 網 [wǎng] -> 婉 [wǎn]
“蒸的啦，不是假的” -- 真 [zhēn] -> 蒸 [zhēng]
"幫我喂鯨魚” -- 金 [jin] -> 鯨 [jing]
---
difference in speaking styles
in addition to differences in pronunciation, there are also differences in speaking habits. in particular, taiwanese like to use:
(1) reduplication
people will commonly repeat words -- IKEA Taiwan memed this back in 2022 by putting up a bunch of posters with duplicated words to describe the items, since IKEA's chinese name uses duplicates too (宜家家居).
“這個包包真好看”
"要乖乖的快去睡覺覺噢”
(2) final particles (喔，啊， 啦， 嘛)
hokkien uses modal particles at the end of sentences much more frequently than mandarin, so the tw accent also adopts this way of speaking. mainlanders might find it to be overly emotional lol
"好冷”，“特別冷” -> "好冷噢~~”, “天啊~這麽這麽冷拉"
(3) raised and trailing sounds
while mainlanders tend to lower the ending sound of a sentence, taiwanese tend to make the last sound louder/longer
(4) please 請, thank you 謝謝, sorry 對不起, excuse me 不好意思
netizens, and even BBC Travel have noticed that taiwanese tend to apologize a lot with 不好意思, which i guess makes taiwan (+ japan) like the canada of the east...basically, politeness is very important!
the hokkien equivalent of this, which is also used very frequently, is 歹势 [pai sei], which you say twice in succession to mean sorry or ask for forgiveness (saying it only once means "unlucky"). you can hear it used at the beginning of eggplantegg's waves wandering.
(5) 和
和 is pronounced hàn in Taiwan, as opposed to hé
(6) huh? 蛤?
蛤? = huh? what did you say? hokkien equivalent = 什麼？[sah-mih]
So this is from 30,000 Miles From Chang’an, which is a 2 hours 47 minutes(!!?) long Chinese animated film that is basically an actually legitimate historical epic and historical biopic (think Gladiator & Amadeus) made into animation, and also passionate tribute to classical art and culture, similar to something like Miss Hokusai or Millennium Actress.
I heard it was decent before, but was not expecting it to be This Ambitious. The Criminally Underrated Champ of 2023 Animation
A Queshan struck iron firework (打铁花; da2tie3hua1) performance to welcome the Year of the Dragon. Queshan struck iron fireworks differ from other iron fireworks due to the two-layered pergola and space required. This particular performance also features dragon dancing.
Please see my post here (my pinned post) for the full journey of how OP learned to strike iron fireworks as well as some other information and details about the art. (This is the video OP is referring to at the beginning of the video.)
*Before the countdown, OP is quoting the poem 青玉案·元夕 by 辛弃疾.
打鐵花 (da2tie3hua1; struck iron fireworks) is a traditional folk firework that began in Henan and Shanxi, first arising in Queshan county, Henan and later circulating through the whole country. It had first appeared during the Northern Song dynasty, and was most popular during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
For Queshan struck iron fireworks, a two-layer pergola is built and covered with willow branches for performances, under which the molten iron is struck up with two willow sticks to create a rain of fire.
[eng by me + edited an ad out]
(On top of the information in the video, I have some more about its recent history under the cut.)
*Also, a note about one of the subtitles: I realized later that "going into battle without a shield" actually just meant going shirtless. I was only confused about this phrasing while translating because she didn't go shirtless, although that is for obvious reasons
Queshan struck iron fireworks had almost been lost before Yang Jianjun unearthed it again in 1988. It had almost died out in the early years of the Republic of China being established, after which there had only been three performances until 1988: 1952, 1956, 1962. Yang Jianjun had seen the 1956 performance as a 7-8 year old and later on as the director of a cultural centre, began digging up the skill and its history. In the process, he became an apprentice to Li Wanfa, who had been the last head of the Queshan Struck Iron Fireworks Society. He practised with sand and water, learning of its historical origin, its ancestral inheritors, craftsmanship and performance arts, but didn't touch the real thing until 1988. Through Yang Jianjun's efforts and investment, the first struck iron fireworks performance in more than 25 years took place in Nanshan Square (then a deserted area) in Queshan county.
Queshan struck iron fireworks are different from other struck iron fireworks in that it requires a wide area to perform, whereas others only needed a wall or could be hit straight up into the air, and it costs much more money to set up.
The names of inheritors are difficult to trace, and can only be traced back to the Qing dynasty during the Qianlong period, making Yang Jianjun a sixth-generation inheritor, and Jiang Xunqian (OP) the first woman and a seventh-generation inheritor.
Posted this on my Insta Stories a couple days back but decided I'd do a post here too because I realised I'm still feeling saddened by Mr Rivers's passing.
For people of certain older generations, especially those who grew up in the 1990s watching Hong Kong TVB series, Mr Rivers, aka 河國榮 (Ho Kwok-Wing) to HK TV viewers, was an easily recognisable and familiar face, having been (at that time) the only foreign/Caucasian face to appear consistently in HK television armed with an impressive fluency in Cantonese.
I guess his passing has affected me more than I thought it would because firstly, I'd admired him for his proficiency in Cantonese and subconsciously looked to him as an inspiration.
As someone who grew up being terrible at Chinese (both Cantonese and Mandarin) and got teased for being “the banana” (i.e. yellow on the outside but white on the inside), the constant presence of this Caucasian guy on TV who could speak better Cantonese than I, partly spurred me on to learn Cantonese better myself.
Secondly, he represented an age when HK and by proxy, Cantonese, was flourishing; Mr Rivers's story of coming to Hong Kong purely motivated by his love for Cantopop and the Cantonese language is (sadly) not the kind of story one will hear very often again…with his passing, it's like yet another bit of the shine of “Golden Age” HK being taken away…and this “Golden Age” was part of my childhood, so it means another part of my childhood is gone…
Anyway, I'll end this post with this video of an interview Mr Rivers did (c. 2007) sharing his thoughts on his experiences as a foreign actor in HK.
小红书 (also referred to as xiaohongshu or XHS) is a Chinese image-based social media platform. It is a combination of the feed, likes, shopping, and video aspects of instagram, with the ~aesthetics~ and majority female audience of pintrest. I've grown really fond of it and found that it's algorithm is better than instagram and MUCH better than pintrest with giving me content I enjoy.
I'm going to offer some vocab that is either unique to the platform, or slang that is found on the platform (esp in bullet comments). I don't want this to be too long, so some terms may be omitted if they are found on many other social media apps
APP
小红书: Literally "Little Red Book". Probably a play off of Chairman Mao's book of speeches and writings which is also referred to as the Little Red Book. The app is not at all political, but more so trying to evoke the "essentiality" and "knowledge" aspect of the term.
笔记: Notes. XHS's name for its posts
收藏: Favorites. Separate from likes, these are bookmarked collections. This and Likes can be hidden
赞过: Likes. Notes that you "heart" will appear here.
关注: Notes from people you follow
发现: Discovery tab
附近: Recent notes
CONTENT
直播: Live-Streams
美甲: Nail Art
穿搭: Style
美食: Food
发型: Hairstyling
头像: Avatars/Profile Pictures
动漫: Animation and Comics
彩妆: Makeup
壁纸: Wallpapers
绘画: Drawing/Art
护肤: Skincare
影视: Film/TV
游行: Travel
减肥: Weight Loss
家居: Home
家装: Interior Design
学习: Studying
读书: Reading
情感: Romance
攝影: Photography
手工: Crafts
文化: Culture
游戏: Video Games
音乐: Music
舞蹈: Dance
搞笑: Comedy
明星: Stars
文具手: Stationary
校园生活: School Life
心里: Psychology
科学科普: Science
艺术: Art
社科: Social Sciences
萌龙: Cute
综艺: Variety
箱包: Handbags
潮鞋: Sneakers
健体塑型: Bodybuilding
职场: Office
婚礼: Wedding
汽车: Automobiles
潮玩手办: Collectable Figures
母婴: Parenting
机车: Motorbikes
户外: Outdoors
运动: Sports
露营: Camping
COMMENTS
(Things you'll see in tags/descriptions/bullet comments)
PLOG: Picture blog. Usually like a blog, but with photos/photo collage (also sometimes vlogs get this tag even though they're videos)
爱自己的100种方式: Originally from a feature on Douyin that would give a "treat yourself" style prompt if you comment this phrase
泰酷辣: Cool. Took off from this meme. “太酷啦”
上岸: Similar to "Goals". Usually posted to applaud an achievement/amazing life experience
巨: Super. Usually used in describing really tasty food “巨巨巨好吃”
cos: Cosplay
emo: The original meaning—emotional. More often used to mean a depressed mood than the style/subculture
磕: to ship a couple (cp)
For the Lesbians
t: Tomboy/masc lesbian (Sub-types include 铁t，奶t，娘t, 爷t, 长发t, 短发t)
p: Femme lesbian (p said to come from "Pretty girl" or “婆”）
h: neither femme nor masc/futch
le/les/啦啦: Lesbian
双女主: F/F couple (IRL or in fiction)
淘淘乐/TTL：T/T relationship
泡泡龙/PPL: P/P relationship
黄鹤楼HI: H/H relationship
TPL: T/P relationship
🐟: Ultra passive bottoms
I explained how keyboard smashing in English expresses laughing really hard and she taught me the Japanese equivalent in return!!
As some of you might know, in Japanese, “w” from the word “to laugh” 笑う 「わらう」 is basically like “lol” in Japanese so when there’s a bunch of “w”’s together it looks like this wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
and it looks like a bunch of grass so one slang word to show something is funny is 草 「くさ」 which is the word/kanji for grass so you don’t have to type out a bunch of w’s.
So the step up from 草 is 大草原 「だいそうげん」 which means prairie since there’s a lot more grass.
And if something leaves you laughing so much that you can’t hold it back you could say 大草原不可避 「だいそうげんふかひ」 which basically means “inevitable prairie”.
The “inevitable part”, 不可避 「ふかひ」 in this phrase means laughter is inevitable and you can’t help but laugh.
大草原不可避 <- ‘dacaoyuan bukebi’ wow. this is a complete sentence written in grammatically correct chinese. ‘the grasslands cannot be avoided’. yet it’s japanese
chinese netizens have also taken 2 using 草 the way japanese use it – as ’lmao’. it probs stuck cos 草 ‘cao’ sounds the same as the most common chinese word 4 ‘fuck’
Douyin's learned a new word it seems, because every video has the word "submission" being spammed underneath. Apparently there was an English exam the other day with the word in one of the prompts, and a ton of people didn't know what it meant.
What's funny is I swiped across a guy attempting to explain the word by connecting it to other words, except he assumed the viewer knew what the English words "dom" and "sub" meant, so got these types of comments lmao:
Why would he assume this, where are people using the English words "dom" and "sub"? Like I have seen people sub English for Chinese terms before, except it's like "BDSM", or using "S"/"M" to mean sadist/masochist (sometimes obfuscating it further by replacing them with terms like 星巴克/麥當勞 (Starbucks/Mcdonalds) or clothing size small/medium) where I'm pretty sure people don't really know what they stand for in English, just what they mean? Where is this guy hanging out lmao
A while ago, I stumbled across this press release for Taiwan's National Names Statistical Analysis report. Then I clicked on the full report and spent days glued to my screen reading it!
So, courtesy of Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior, let's look at some of the data. We will look at: top given names, top full names, and top unisex names.
Format:
陈淑芬 | 陳淑芬 Chén Shūfēn | Chén Shúfēn / 3747人
简体 | 繁體 读音 | 台湾读音 / 人数
(Simp.) | (trad.) (pronunciation) | (Taiwan pronunciation) / (# people)
I put simplified first for consistency with the rest of my blog. 简体 | 繁體 is the convention I use in many other posts.
Top 10 given names (by decade)
The report shows the top names by decade, which is really fascinating because you can see how tastes and trends changed over time. I'm just going to show the overall top 10 and last three full decades (1990s, 2000s, and 2010s) but you can see the rest on pg. 280 of the report (pg. 281 of the PDF).
Male
Overall
家豪 Jiāháo / 14,038人
志明 Zhìmíng / 12,719人
建宏 Jiànhóng / 12,196人
俊杰 | 俊傑 Jùnjié / 12,187人
俊宏 Jùnhóng / 11,189人
志豪 Zhìháo / 10,676人
志伟 | 志偉 Zhìwěi / 10,563人
承翰 Chénghàn / 9726人
冠宇 Guànyǔ / 9655人
志强 | 志強 Zhìqiáng / 9101人
1991-2000
家豪 Jiāháo / 4039人
冠宇 Guànyǔ / 3603人
冠廷 Guàntíng / 3399人
承翰 Chénghàn / 3008人
宗翰 Zōnghàn / 2831人
柏翰 Bóhàn / 2594人
彦廷 | 彥廷 Yàntíng / 2502人
冠霖 Guànlín / 2114人
俊杰 | 俊傑 Jùnjié / 2084人
承恩 Chéng’ēn / 1918人
2001-2010
承恩 Chéng’ēn / 2997人
承翰 Chénghàn / 2636人
冠廷 Guàntíng / 2452人
冠宇 Guànyǔ / 2206人
宇翔 Yǔxiáng / 1938人
柏翰 Bóhàn / 1885人
彦廷 | 彥廷 Yàntíng / 1610人
冠霖 Guànlín / 1509人
柏宇 Bóyǔ / 1471人
柏谚 | 柏諺 Bóyàn / 1409人
2011-2020
承恩 Chéng’ēn / 2215人
宥廷 Yòutíng / 2036人
品睿 Pǐnruì / 2021人
宸睿 Chénruì / 1904人
宇恩 Yǔ’ēn / 1860人
宇翔 Yǔxiáng / 1713人
承翰 Chénghàn / 1556人
宥辰 Yòuchén / 1532人
柏睿 Bóruì / 1511人
睿恩 Ruì’ēn / 1503人
Female
Overall
淑芬 Shūfēn | Shúfēn / 31,879人
淑惠 Shūhuì | Shúhuì / 30,420人
美玲 Měilíng / 27,487人
丽华 | 麗華 Lìhuá / 25,624人
美惠 Měihuì / 25,015人
淑贞 | 淑貞 Shūzhēn | Shúzhēn / 23,904人
雅婷 Yǎtíng / 23,407人
秀英 Xiùyīng / 23,020人
淑娟 Shūjuān | Shújuān / 22,828人
秀琴 Xiùqín / 22,266人
1991-2000
雅婷 Yǎtíng / 5797人
怡君 Yíjūn / 3575人
怡婷 Yítíng / 3183人
雅雯 Yǎwén / 3084人
诗涵 | 詩涵 Shīhán / 3006人
钰婷 | 鈺婷 Yùtíng / 2775人
怡萱 Yíxuān / 2729人
雅筑 Yǎzhù | Yǎzhú / 2700人
郁婷 Yùtíng / 2600人
宜庭 Yítíng / 2555人
2001-2010
宜蓁 Yízhēn / 2629人
欣妤 Xīnyú / 1643人
诗涵 | 詩涵 Shīhán / 1610人
思妤 Sīyú / 1561人
雅婷 Yǎtíng / 1439人
宜庭 Yítíng / 1394人
佳颖 | 佳穎 Jiāyǐng / 1375人
品妤 Pǐnyú / 1336人
子涵 Zǐhán / 1271人
怡萱 Yíxuān / 1258人
2011-2020
品妍 Pǐnyán/ 2421人
子晴 Zǐqíng / 2087人
咏晴 | 詠晴 Yǒngqíng / 2001人
品妤 Pǐnyú / 1697人
禹彤 Yǔtóng / 1578人
羽彤 Yǔtóng / 1434人
芯语 | 芯語 Xīnyǔ / 1342人
宥蓁 Yòuzhēn / 1226人
语彤 | 語彤 Yǔtóng / 1221人
苡晴 Yǐqíng / 1164人
Top 10 full names
In Mainland China the most common full names are usually something like 张伟 and 李娜. In Taiwan, 单名 (single-character given names) are much rarer, so the results are very different. We can also really see the dominance of the surname 陈 here. The rest of the top 100 are on pg. 268 of the report (pg. 269 of the PDF).
Male
陈冠宇 | 陳冠宇 Chén Guànyǔ / 4021人
陈建宏 | 陳建宏 Chén Jiànhóng / 3524人
张家豪 | 張家豪 Zhāng Jiāháo / 2890人
陈俊宏 | 陳俊宏 Chén Jùnhóng / 2801人
陈冠廷 | 陳冠廷 Chén Guàntíng / 2469人
陈柏宇 | 陳柏宇 Chén Bóyǔ / 2383人
林建宏 Lín Jiànhóng / 2375人
陈柏翰 | 陳柏翰 Chén Bóhàn / 2353人
陈彦廷 | 陳彥廷 Chén Yàntíng / 2249人
陈信宏 | 陳信宏 Chén Xìnhóng / 2120人
Female
陈怡君 | 陳怡君 Chén Yíjūn / 5744人
林怡君 Lín Yíjūn / 4401人
陈淑芬 | 陳淑芬 Chén Shūfēn | Chén Shúfēn / 3747人
张雅婷 | 張雅婷 Zhāng Yǎtíng / 3491人
陈美玲 | 陳美玲 Chén Měilíng / 3235人
陈怡如 | 陳怡如 Chén Yírú / 3121人
陈美惠 | 陳美惠 Chén Měihuì / 3103人
陈淑惠 | 陳淑惠 Chén Shūhuì | Chén Shúhuì / 2921人
林淑惠 Lín Shūhuì | Lín Shúhuì / 2903人
陈淑贞 | 陳淑貞 Chén Shūzhēn | Chén Shúzhēn / 2751人
Unisex/gender-neutral names
Do you want a name that doesn't strongly lean towards masculine or feminine? The report also highlight the common names across genders. It seems their criteria for this was names falling between 40% male-60% female and 60% male-40% female.
To clarify, they actually looked at the top 100 full names, not given names. For instance, 宥均 Yòujūn was on the list three times with three different surnames. But I re-sorted the list by given name since I was curious to see that. You can find the original data on pg. 270 of the report (pg. 271 of the PDF).
The report is INCREDIBLY detailed. I'm not kidding. The body of the report is not that long, but it has a very long appendix with about 200 pages of tables. Here are some examples of data included that I didn't mention:
Most popular given names people changed their names to
Most common 单名 and 叠字名字
Most common last names by city/county
Indigenous peoples' use of the Latin alphabet for names
Prevalence of multi-character surnames
And so, so much more!
And FYI, the report uses the ROC calendar, which starts with the founding of the Republic of China. To convert from the ROC calendar to the Gregorian calendar, add 111.
Ex:
1年=1912
112年=2023
Pronunciation & tones
冠 is a 多音字 that is pronounced guān or guàn. I went with guàn because that seems to be more common in names from what I've observed.
柏 is also a 多音字 that can be pronounced bǎi or bó. MDBG says Taiwan doesn't have the bǎi pronunciation. I usually hear it read as bó in names, so that's what I'm going with.
MDBG also says 淑 is pronounced shú (not shū) in Taiwan. Likewise, it says 筑 is zhú (not zhù). I'll take their word for it.
I tried to put apostrophes in the right places (like for 承恩 Chéng’ēn), but I'm really bad at knowing when and where to use it. Please pardon any mistakes!
See similar posts:
Chinese surnames that are more common in Taiwan
A closer look at Chinese names
Analyzing Chinese names: Syllables & tones
The evolution of Chinese names (Kontinentalist)
Context: I shared a story on Weibo about how I experience -17 degree for the first time in Sweden and some people commented the following:
I wasn’t expecting these comments to say the least. To me the 🥵 was hinting as some sexual underlying meaning.
But I couldn’t be more wrong haha.
Turns out, it’s a reference to a 2011 series called 后宫甄嬛传 (hòugōng zhēn huánchuán). It is (according to my friend) the most famous Chinese series about Qing dynasty.
And in this story, if someone commits a crime of offend the emperor they could be sentenced to go to a place called 宁古塔, which is very very cold (like Sweden)
So these comments were asking to be exiled to 宁古塔 simply meaning that they would want to go to a cold place like Sweden haha.
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