What is the reason?
First, let's look at the background of the named generation.
The naming of generations is closely related to the inheritance of ancient Confucianism in China.
Under the guidance of Confucian benevolence, coupled with the natural closure of agricultural economy and the need of rule, feudal society also advocated the mode of living in groups. So in today's China, villages named after surnames can be seen everywhere, such as Macun and Lizhuang.
Although some villages are not named after surnames, it is often several surnames that occupy most of the population in the village.
Under such circumstances, with more and more people of the same clan, it is very common for people of the same clan not to know each other. This brings a very serious problem. People can't accurately judge seniority by age. The grandson may be much older than his grandparents.
In this way, the appellation may be confused, which is not allowed by Confucianism. In order to solve this problem, people invented the way of naming word generation. The specific way is to write a poem with words instead of words, and name it according to words.
The advantage of this is that people of the same clan will know their seniority and generally know how to address them as long as they give each other names.
Entering the modern society, the population mobility has increased, the urbanization process has been greatly accelerated, and the social lifestyle has gradually disintegrated. More importantly, with the change of people's thinking, the feudal etiquette system has been abandoned. Therefore, modern people no longer attach importance to the arrangement of generations with distant blood relations as before.
Therefore, the decline of generation names is inevitable.
Of course, as a cultural tradition with a long history, it is impossible for generations to be named soon. In recent years, with the emphasis on family inheritance in various places, many places have begun to rebuild genealogy. When compiling genealogy, we should distinguish between the old and the young. Therefore, many people often take another name according to their word generation, which is specially used for genealogy, called genealogical name.
This is what Chiang Kai-shek did. His name is Zhongzheng, the word Jieshi, and his name in the genealogy is Jiang.
In this way, a name in life and a name in genealogy are formed, which can be regarded as the inheritance and development of the culture of the word generation.