|
BEIJING, June
17 2004 (Xinhuanet)
As globalization sweeps through China, parents of newborn babies in
the world's most populous nation are feeling a new type of
competition -- how to come up with unique names for their children.
They want to help their kids stand out from the very beginning by
giving them a unique and beautiful name. "In China, it really
helps to have a good name people remember," an on-line BBS
(billboard bulletin system) quoted a would-be father surnamed Wang as
saying.
Though China is rapidly becoming international, the country
is still working hard to try to preserve centuries-old traditions,
one of which is carefully naming their offspring. "A person's
name is not only identification, but a way of expressing aspirations
and expectations," said Zhang Shuyan, senior researcher at the
State Committee for Reforming Chinese Written Language. "When
parents choose a name for their kids, they are apt to associate it
with some enjoyable and memorable object or incident," he said.
But parents are facing increased chances of having their kids' names
identical to many others as more and more people have one-character
given names instead of two. For instance, more than 2,000 women are
named "Meili" in Chinese, or "beautiful", in
Xiamen, a special economic zone in eastern China's Fujian Province.
Moreover, the a growing number of people with the same surname
increases the number of namesakes in China, where 270 million of its
1.3 billion population are named Li, Wang or Zhang, making up 7.9
percent, 7.4 percent and 7.1 percent of the total population
respectively. Linguistic scholars suggest using a two-character given
name to reduce the number of people with identical names.
But some
parents prefer rare words when choosing a name for their children, a
way through which ancient royal families preserved their dignity and
nobility. In ancient China, it was taboo to use the personal names of
emperors, who usually preferred choosing rare words to avoid turmoil
in the country if common words were used. Parents believe that such
unique names consisting of rare words will give their children access
to a unique personality, or even a logo of sorts in a sometimes
impersonal society. They hold that a wide-range selection from up to
80,000 Chinese characters will easily enable them to pick an
exclusive name for their kids.
Linguists recommend caution, however,
saying that such creativity is fine, but the strategy can backfire
when they open a bank account, register for an identity card and get
a driver license. Most such rare characters are not included in the
current computer database of Chinese characters, and cannot be
printed correctly. To tackle this problem, China is planning to
compile a list of some 12,000 characters of standard words and given
names to regulate the use of characters as names. About 3,500 Chinese
characters are frequently used in modern China, making up 99.48
percent of those appearing in modern publications, according to the
State Language Commission and the Ministry of Education.
Experts said
that those characters would be wide enough for them to choose a nice,
beautiful and unique name for their children. "The immoderate
use of rare peculiar characters for individual names have brought
great trouble to computer management in fields like banks, insurance
and communications," said Li Bing, who heads a
"Standardization of Chinese Names" group with the State
Language Commission. "The aim of drafting a list of Chinese
names is to define the proper ranges of name characters," Li
said. The desire for parents to pick a unique name for their lovely
children might be attributed to fierce modern competition, but the
influence of history still lingers on. Chinese places much greater
stock in the meaning of names than most native English speakers do.
In China, many foreign words are assimilated into Chinese names with
great care. America is "Meiguo" or "beautiful
country", for example. So it goes with native Chinese given
names, too. In some two decades during the 1950s and 1960s, people's
political awareness produced children with given names like
"Jianguo," "Jiefang" and "Aijun" --
"build the nation", "liberation" and "love
the army".
A person's name in the Chinese is not just his or her
individual identity but also reflects the social changes of the
times. This is particularly true of Chinese names, as the given names
are chosen and selected from among ordinary words for their meanings,
not from a list of first names that evolved over the years, as in
Western nations.
In the past, a vast number of countryside kids were
named "Xiaozhu" (piglet) or "Xiaogou" (puppy)
because the farmers were very poor and hoped that they could bring up
their children as cheaply as raising pigs and dogs. With food no
longer a big worry since the early 1980s and farmers expecting their
children to make a good living, "Fu" (wealth) and
"Jin" (money) have become increasingly popular words for
given names. The six most common ones are "Ying" (hero or
flower), "Hua" (flower or China), "Yu" (jade),
"Xiu" (elegant), "Ming" (bright) and
"Zhen" (treasure).
But regional discrepancies have also
been spotted in the selection of words for names. In the Chinese
capital of Beijing, for example, the word "Shu" (kind and
gentle) is the favourite name for women, while in Shanghai local
people are more likely to use "Mei" (sister-like).
|
|
