In traditional Chinese culture, the Five Elements Theory is the most important and most influential theory.
The five elements refer to the five substances of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The ancient Chinese sages used these five substances in daily life to explain the origin of all things in the world and the unity of diversity, and put forward the principle of "the five elements complement each other." According to this principle, "mutual generation" means mutual promotion, such as "wood generates fire, fire generates earth, earth generates metal, metal generates water, water generates wood" etc. "Xiangsheng" or "xiangke" means mutual exclusion, such as "water wins over fire, fire wins over metal, metal wins over wood, wood wins over earth, and earth wins over water" etc.
The theory of the Five Elements encompasses many natural phenomena and phenomena, such as the five colors (green, red, yellow, white, and black), the five sounds (horn, sign, palace, business, (feather), five flavors (sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, salty), five internal organs (liver, heart, spleen, lung, kidney), Wuchang (benevolence, righteousness, propriety, faith, wisdom), etc.
The Five Elements Theory has elements of simple materialism and dialectics. It played an important role in the development of ancient Chinese natural sciences and had an important impact on China and people's lives.
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Lu Xun’s article "Hometown" once involved a way of naming using the Five Elements Theory. He described in it:
"A golden full moon hangs in the deep blue sky, and below is the sandy land on the seaside. There are endless green watermelons planted there. In the meantime, there was a boy of eleven or twelve years old, wearing a silver ring around his neck, holding a steel fork, and stabbed a harpoon with all his strength, but the harpoon twisted its body and ran away from him. It's Runtu. I've heard the name Runtu for a long time, and I know that he is about the same age as me, born in the leap month, and lacks earth in the five elements, so he calls him Runtu."
The name Runtu was derived from the Five Elements theory. Using the Five Elements theory to name people shows that the wisdom in this ancient Chinese theory has been associated with people's names.
This also shows from another aspect that naming is a very important thing in the minds of the Chinese people. things.
The Five Elements Theory was used to study phenomena very early. During the Warring States Period, Mencius loudly declared that "a king will rise in five hundred years." His "historical cycle theory" , which is influenced by the Five Elements Theory.
During the Han Dynasty, people were more interested in the mutual growth of the five elements. Therefore, the order of the five elements replaced the concept of the mutual victory of the five elements, and was used to mark the changing dynasties in history. It has become fashionable to use the order of the five elements to explain the evolution of history.
As the theory of the Five Elements is increasingly perfected and promoted, and as the concept of the Five Elements becomes increasingly ingrained in people’s minds, people begin to name it after the Five Elements theory in order to seek a Theoretical basis for naming.
Initially, when people used the five elements to represent the dynasties that changed in history, they found that it was more orderly and reasonable to use the mutual generation of the five elements theory to represent the relationship between father and son.
Therefore, some people in the Tang Dynasty adopted the order of the five elements in naming, taking the characters with the radicals of metal, wood, water, fire and earth as names, in order of the age of the family. Passed down from generation to generation. If the name is chosen next to the character for earth, then the son will be named next to the character for gold, and the grandson will be named next to the character for water. According to the order of the five elements, earth generates metal, and metal generates water.
Bi Gou, a native of the Tang Dynasty, was famous for his knowledge. He could write at the age of 6 and passed the Jinshi examination at the age of 20. He also had political achievements as an official. Therefore, "Book of Tang" and "Book of Tang Dynasty" "His biography is in the book. The name of their family is named after the Five Elements Theory. Bi Gou's name is "mu", his son's name is Bi Kang, which is "fire", and his grandson's name is Bi Zeng, which is "tu".
During the Song Dynasty, there were even more examples of people naming things after the Five Elements Theory. For example, Zhu Xi, one of the founders of Cheng Zhu Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty, also used the Five Elements theory to name his family.
Zhu Xi's name is Zhu Song, and pine is next to the character "木"; the four points under the character "熹" in Zhu Xi's name are not water, but fire, because "Shuowen Jiezi" explains: "Xi, Zhi". The original meaning is barbecue. The meaning of Zhu Xi's son is Zhu Zai, which is next to the character for earth. There are three generations of a family, wood generates fire, fire generates earth, and the order is in order.
Another example is Qin Hui, the great treacherous official of the Southern Song Dynasty. His family also used the Five Elements theory in their naming. Qin Hui's name is the character for wood, his son's name is Qin Xi, which is the character for fire, and Qin Hui's grandson's name is Qin Xun, whose name is the character for earth. Wood generates fire, and fire generates earth. They are arranged in the order of the five elements.
Examples of using the five elements to name are not rare in history, and most of them occur in the homes of upper-class people.
Among the five elements named after metal, wood, water, fire and earth, the most prominent one is the family of Zhu Yuanzhang in the Ming Dynasty.
Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang’s naming was complicated. On the one hand, he imitated Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin in assigning generation names to his descendants. He specified the name format as: surname, generation name, and also specified the use of characters for naming. The "five elements radicals" must be used, that is, the words with metal, wood, water, fire, and earth as the radicals, and the order of fire, earth, metal, water, and wood must be, that is, the order of the five elements' cyclic generation. (So, some names are really difficult to recognize. Let’s take Zhu Yuanzhang’s sons as an example. Zhu Fan, Zhu Huan, Zhu Huan...are you right? Not to mention that more than two hundred years later, all the names have been taken. )
Taizu of the Ming Dynasty: Zhu Yuanzhang (it is said that the three characters "Zhu Yuanzhang" have the saying "the sharp weapon that destroyed the Yuan Dynasty")
Representative figures of the second generation: Zhu Biao, Zhu Di (next to the word wood)
Representative figures of the third generation: Zhu Gaochi, Zhu Yunwen (next to the word fire)
Representative figures: Zhu Zhanji (next to the word earth)
Representative figures: Zhu Qizhen, Zhu Qiyu (next to the word gold)
Representative of the sixth generation: Zhu Jianshen (next to the character water)
Representative of the seventh generation: Zhu Youtang (next to the character wood) )
Representative figures of the eighth generation: Zhu Houyi, Zhu Houcong (next to the word fire)
Representative figures of the ninth generation: Zhu Zaihe (next to the word earth)
Representative of the tenth generation: Zhu Yijun (next to the word gold)
Eleventh generation Representative figures: Zhu Changluo, Zhu Changxun (next to the word water)
Representative figures of the twelfth generation: Zhu Youjian, Zhu Youxiao (next to the word wood)
People use the method of naming the five elements to reflect the survival philosophy of the people at that time, and it is a standard reflection of Chinese wisdom.
Using the Five Elements theory to name not only implies the intention of endless life and expansion, but also provides a theoretical basis for naming for Chinese people who are governed by Confucianism. . Several personal names
Together, they constitute the movement of the Five Elements, which not only solves the needs of future generations for survival concepts, but also opens up a channel for the creation of fatalistic concepts such as this life, the next life, and the hereafter. .
For ordinary people, although they also have the desire to have endless descendants, their low and humble status makes them want to name them in the order of the five elements. Compared with the upper-class people who have high status, live a good life, and hope to live forever and have rich descendants, their aspirations are much weaker. They are more troubled by real life and seek to change their own destiny or that of their descendants.
When it comes to naming, they don’t pay enough attention to the order of the Five Elements, but pay more attention to the temperament of themselves or their children, and try to use the Five Elements theory to achieve various compensations through naming. , to make up for the lack of energy in the Five Elements in oneself or in one’s children.
Ancient Chinese philosophy has always talked about the "unity of nature and man", emphasizing the unity of "" and "", "nature" and "man-made". Modern people mostly regard this theory as the basis for the relationship between man and nature in Eastern culture. Although the "unity of man and nature" later gave rise to the mysterious theory of "heaven and man", there is scientific reason to pay attention to the relationship between man and nature.
Using the Five Elements theory to consider people's endowments and naming them according to the five elements of people's endowments is developed with the help of the theories of Chinese Neo-Confucianists. The way to name the birth date and horoscope.
Theoretically, the five elements of a person's endowment determine his talent and destiny. The five elements of Qi a person is endowed with are related to his birth date and horoscope.
The so-called "birthday eight characters" refer to the year, month, day, and hour of a person's birth, which are marked by the combination of heavenly stems and earthly branches. This combination of heavenly stems and earthly dominance To mark, use two characters for each item. *** has four items: year, month, day, and hour, and *** uses eight characters. For example, in the year of Jiazi, the month of Wuxu, the day of Bingchen, and the time of Renzi, they are called "eight characters".
Match the heavenly stems and earthly branches with the five elements, so that the birth date represents the five elements endowed by the person. Generally speaking, the heavenly stems that match the five elements are: A and B belong to wood, B and D belong to fire, Wu and Ji belong to earth, Geng and Xin belong to gold, and Ren and Gui belong to water. The earthly branches match the five elements: Yin, Mao, and Chen belong to wood, Si, Wu, and Wei belong to fire, Shen, You, and Xu belong to metal, Hai, Zi, and Chou belong to water, and earth is placed in Chen, Xu, Chou, and Wei. between.
In naming, gold, wood, water, fire and earth from the five elements are used to add to the name to make up for the lack of "birthday and eight characters". This is what many parents give Common phenomena in naming children.
The year, month, day, hour, stems and earthly branches in the horoscope can be expressed by metal, wood, water, fire and earth. If you see what is missing, add something or a radical to the name to make up for the deficiency. . Nowadays, more and more people are naming in this way. As mentioned above, on the day of Renzi on the Bingchen day of the Wuxu month in the Jiazi year, the metal, wood, water, fire and earth expressing the heavenly stems and earthly branches are substituted (A and B belong to wood, Bing and Ding belong to fire, Wu and Ji belong to earth, Geng and Xin belong to Metal, Ren, and Gui belong to water. The matching of the earthly branches with the five elements is: Yin, Mao, and Chen belong to wood, Si, Wu, and Wei belong to fire, Shen, You, and Xu belong to metal, Hai, Zi, and Chou belong to water, and earth belongs to water. (Between Chen, Xu, Chou and Wei): In the year, A is wood and is water, in month Wu is earth and Xu is also earth, in day B is fire and Chen is earth, in hour Ren is water and water, statistical results : 1 wood, 1 fire, 3 earth, 3 water. Water and soil are too strong but there is no metal. Metal represents the lungs, which means the lungs are very weak (the spleen, stomach and kidneys are too strong). Therefore, when naming, you need to add gold, wood, and fire. Some people name it with three pieces of gold (Xin), three pieces of wood (sen), and three pieces of fire (yan).
Many people with such names do not believe in star destiny, but star destiny has traditional roots in the family. When he was young, his parents named him like this. You can't change it anymore when you grow up.
It is still a phenomenon that parents consider the five elements of their children’s endowment and then name them. This naming method embodies parents' love and expectations for their children. They inject their parents' cherishment
into their children's names, and influence their children in a subtle way.
From a psychological perspective, it is not a bad thing to pay attention to the balance of the Five Elements in your body. As for whether using the Five Elements in your name is effective and whether it can remedy the problems of being endowed with the Five Elements Insufficiency is still a problem that has not been tested and cannot be tested.
Consider it from a stable state of mind and from a psychological perspective, based on the shortcomings of the five elements of your own endowment (we often hear people say that I have a lot of fire, I have a yin deficiency, I am afraid of fire, in fact It is a kind of self-suggestion and self-recognition) and giving a corresponding name can help individuals psychologically suggest and achieve psychological balance. The effect is similar to a mild and long-lasting form of psychotherapy.
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Note: This article is modified and added based on Huiyuan's "Name Science".