The ancients believed that a person's name stored all the information of his life and destiny, and it was the hub of communication between heaven and earth, which reflected the intuitive consciousness of the flesh-and-blood harmony between man and nature. A person's name was more than just a code to distinguish one person from others. Therefore, the ancients attached great importance to names.
We all know that "the joy of playing with Zhang" and "the joy of playing with tiles", that is, "Nongzhang" is a boy, and "playing with tiles" is a girl. However, naming a boy or a girl is a very serious family event. The ancients paid attention to "easy memory" in naming, but paid more attention to "exquisite" and "meaningful".
The ancient people named it as "The Songs of Chu for men and the Book of Songs for women". In history, most of the names of scholars were taken from classics, history, zi and Ji. However, a person's name plus the words used by the ancients is only two words, three words, and at most four words. How can a paragraph of literature or an allusion be summarized into two or three words and become a name?
The author saw several examples in the book: Pan Yue's word An Ren in the Jin Dynasty was taken from The Analects of Confucius Yong Ye: "The benevolent is Leshan." "Benevolence": "Benevolent people are peaceful". Yue means mountain, so "An Ren" corresponds to "Yue". In the Southern Song Dynasty, Li Jian's word Meng Da was taken from Mencius with all his heart: "If you are poor, you will be single, and if you are rich, you will be good at the world."
in the Qing dynasty, Dai Zhen wrote the word dongyuan, which was taken from Yi Shuo Gua: "Everything is out of shock, shock, and the east is also." It can be seen that the above names are all taken from classics, history, philosophers and collections, and most of them are widely used, with high ideas, rich connotations and no lack of artistry. Chinese has the visibility of "seeing and knowing, observing and understanding". If Chinese characters are not one word and one syllable, and the Chinese characters that record Chinese are also one word and one sound, then this name combination cannot exist.
It's interesting that novelists in Ming and Qing Dynasties named the characters in their novels by using the semantic meaning of names and the characteristics of Chinese characters that can be separated and combined, and homonyms and similar characters. The most typical one is the Water Margin, which is familiar to everyone. Everyone in Liangshan has a memorable name: "Black whirlwind likui jy", "prodigal Zhang Shun" and "Flower monk Lu Zhishen".
So, what are the taboos for people to name today? Some people may ask that naming is a family matter. Should there be any restrictions? The answer is yes. It should be understood that names came into being after the formation of human society. In social life, people need to give everyone a code name to address and distinguish each other for communication. Therefore, sociality is the basic attribute of a name, and appellation and distinction are the basic functions of a name. These two points determine that a name is not just a personal matter, but must be restricted by society.