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What's in the NAME?

So we need to give our child a name. English name as well as Chinese name. Well, literally English name can be derived from the Chinese name. Since we are not knowledgeable in the Chinese naming convention, a friend of us lent us a book - The Book of Chinese Names, a guide to auspicious and elegant names. Wow, elegant name somemore.

But first, let's understand how did "name" derived, from the Chinese cultural perspective. Check out the Chinese character for name:
名 (ming)
This character was derived from a composition of two words: 夕 (xi) and 口 (kou), which mean evening and mouth respectively. You may wonder why the ancient Chinese created "name" with "evening" and "mouth". Well, after evening time comes night. At night time, it was difficult for them to recognize each other (remember they didn't have lamp yet). So they had to call each other. That's how the name come about.

So you know the history of name. Then why Chinese has surname? How did it come about?

To be continued...

Comments

Anonymous said…
nice story

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