Surname first
In Chinese, the family name comes before the given name. A person named Li Ming has the surname Li and the given name Ming. The order is often explained as reflecting a worldview in which the family comes first and the individual second, though it is also simply the grammar of the language: broader category first, narrower detail after, as in dates, which run from year to month to day.
Most surnames are a single character, and most given names are one or two characters. A full name is therefore usually two to four characters long. A small number of surnames use two characters, such as Ouyang (欧阳) or Sima (司马). This is why a three-character name can be ambiguous to outsiders: it may be a one-character surname with a two-character given name, or, occasionally, a two-character surname with a one-character given name. Native readers usually know which, because surnames come from a limited list.
When written in English or other languages, people sometimes flip the order to match local expectations, and some keep the Chinese order. Both exist, and the choice is personal. In pinyin romanization, two-character given names are usually joined into one word, so Li Xiaoming is surname Li, given name Xiaoming.
Traditionally, women kept their own surnames after marriage in China, and still do in most cases today. Historically, however, a married woman was often referred to in relation to her husband’s family or by a combination of both surnames, practices that varied by region and period.
Choosing a given name
A given name is a meaningful phrase made of characters, not a fixed list of inherited names like in many other cultures. Because Chinese characters each carry meaning, parents can combine characters to form a message. This gives enormous freedom, and there are no official lists of “boys’ names” and “girls’ names,” although certain characters are used more by one gender than the other.
Parents often weigh several things.
- Meaning. The characters should have a positive, hopeful sense.
- Sound. The name should sound pleasant, work with the surname, and not accidentally sound like something unfortunate or comic. Chinese tones matter here, since a name’s rhythm affects how it is spoken.
- Appearance. Some families look at how the characters appear together in writing, including whether they are easy to write.
- Family and tradition. The name may echo a poem, a classic text, or an elder’s wishes.
Some families also consult a fortune-teller or almanac to match a name to the child’s birth time or the five elements. This is a cultural tradition followed by some families and ignored by others, and it should not be treated as having any proven effect.
What names often express
Names often express hopes for the child. Without implying that any one name is typical, here are some broad themes and the sorts of characters that commonly appear.
- Virtue and character. Characters meaning virtue (德), kindness (仁), or integrity are often used. The tradition of valuing moral cultivation runs back to Confucian values.
- Learning and intelligence. Characters meaning wisdom (慧), literary elegance (文), or talent (才) express hopes for education, which has long been seen as a path to security.
- Strength and achievement. Characters meaning strong (强), brave, or great (伟) appear especially in boys’ names.
- Beauty and gentleness. Characters connected with flowers, jade, pearls, and graceful qualities have traditionally appeared more often in girls’ names.
- Peace, health, and happiness. Characters such as 安 (ān, peaceful) and 福 (fú, blessing) express wishes for a trouble-free life.
- Nature and seasons. Mountains, rivers, and moons, along with the season or place of birth, are other familiar inspirations.
- The times. In some periods, many parents chose characters that reflected the spirit of their era, so names can hint at a generation.
These patterns are tendencies. Modern parents increasingly choose names for their sound, their uniqueness, or their ease of use, and many want to avoid very common names. Names meant to be gender-neutral are also popular.
Generation names and family customs
Some families give siblings or cousins one shared character in their given names, called a generation name. Which character is used is sometimes decided by a poem or list recorded in a family record, so that each generation takes the next character in order. Clan genealogies often preserved such lists, allowing relatives who had never met to work out their relative generation from the name alone. The custom is less common today, but it still exists in some families and regions.
Traditionally, a child was also not given a name identical to or including the same character as a living elder or ancestor, because using it would have been disrespectful. This is part of the reason for the wide variety of characters used in given names.
Before or alongside the formal name, many children received a “milk name” (乳名), an affectionate informal name used at home in early childhood. Birth customs often involved naming around the first month. Later in life, people might take a courtesy name or an art name.
Names today
In modern China, the surname and given name are registered officially, and the same name may be written differently in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia due to dialect and romanization systems. The surname Chen, for instance, may appear as Chan or Tan, depending on pronunciation and local convention. Many people also use an additional name in another language for work or study.
Names are rarely just labels. Through a few characters, a name records a parent’s wishes at the moment of birth, and reading one carefully often says something about the family, the era, and the hopes behind it.