According to the traditional Chinese Five Elements nomenclature, a person's name advocates the existence of the Five Elements, that is, using the missing or weak attributes of life to fill one's fortune. So, how to name fire, water, and earth according to metal and wood, and how to distinguish the five elements of Chinese characters? Let's find out what this boy's name is!
A brief introduction to the naming of the five elements
The five elements refer to the five substances: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Ancient Chinese sages used these five substances in daily life to explain the origin and diversity of all things in the world, and put forward the principle of "five elements give rise to victory". 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" and so on. "Mutual victory" means mutual exclusion, such as "water defeats fire, fire defeats metal, metal defeats wood, wood defeats earth, and earth defeats water."
For a long time, the Five Elements Theory has been used to study social phenomena. During the Warring States Period, Mencius shouted, "There will be a prosperous age of kings in five hundred years." His "historical cycle theory" was influenced by the Five Elements Theory.
In the Han Dynasty, the order of the five elements' survival replaced the concept of the five elements' mutual victory and was used to mark the changing dynasties in history. It is very fashionable to use the sequence of the five elements to explain the evolution of history.
When people used the Five Elements to represent the changing dynasties in history, they found that it was more orderly and reasonable to use the Five Elements theory to represent the relationship between father and son. As a result, some people in the Tang Dynasty adopted the order of the Five Elements, naming characters with metal, wood, water, fire, and earth as their radicals, and passed them down from generation to generation in family order. If the father is named next to the character "earth", then the son is named next to the character "gold", and the grandson is named next to the character "water". According to the order of the five elements, earth generates gold, and metal generates water.
How to distinguish the five elements attributes of Chinese characters
General distinction principle: judge based on the meaning of the word. Tracing back to its origin, we clarified the five elements of this word.
There are radicals
Because Chinese characters are pictographs, this method is scientific in principle, but it also has some shortcomings, that is, it is easy to distinguish using radicals, but there are no radicals or there are multiple It is difficult to distinguish the attributes of the five elements from the radicals. The way to distinguish is to distinguish between primary and secondary, not only by referring to which radical the word belongs to, but also by considering the actual or symbolic meaning of the word.
For example, the word "Dan" has its radical in water, its main meaning is water, and its function is to use water to reduce fire. Therefore, "Dan" is the Chinese character for water and fire, with the primary fifth being water and the secondary fifth being fire.
For example, the word "Liang" has three elements: water, wood, and gold, but its radical is wood, which can be used as a pillar. Its original meaning is that wood is the main element, followed by water and metal.
There is no definite radical
If there are no five elements in Chinese characters, they can only be distinguished by the meaning they express. Some Chinese characters indirectly express the five elements, such as the character "山". Mountains are originally made of earth and rocks, so the five elements belong to earth, and Chinese characters with mountain as the radical have the element of earth. For example, Chinese characters such as "日" and "光" are all emitted by the sun or heat, and the five elements belong to fire. The Chinese characters with "日" and "光" naturally contain the element of fire.
It is appropriate to name a boy according to the five elements
The five elements belong to gold: Xiu, Sheng, Ming, Xin, Gang and Chen.
Five elements of wood: catalpa, pavilion, rong, forest, maple, forest.
The five elements belong to water: Han, Luo, Yuan, Dong, Miao and Hou.
The five elements belong to fire: Yi, Ye, Tao, Xuan, Jade, and Yao.
The five elements belong to earth: Wei, Xiang, Xun, De, Heng and Zheng.