The answer is actually more cruel than you think! Because there are bitter tears in it!
I have been living in rural areas and have the best say on this issue.
1. Let’s talk about a fact first:
Our village is located in the Jizhong Plain, a typical farming village.
More than 85% of the people in the village have the surname Zhang and share the same ancestor.
According to legend, during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, two ancestors and brothers immigrated from Dahuaishu, Hongdong County, Shanxi, and the other ancestor settled in Zhenggong Village ten miles away.
After more than six hundred years of hard work and multiplication, the family now has a population of more than 3,000.
Although the population is large, the seniority is clear and the elders and younger ones are orderly.
In the past, there was a "Family Tree Hall" in the village, and the naming of the older generation mostly followed the naming of the family tree.
Of course, there are also people who are unconventional and unruly.
Decades ago, during the movement to destroy the Four Olds, the family tree hall in my village was demolished and the family trees were reportedly burned.
There is no basis for genealogy, so the children are named randomly, which is very confusing.
In some families, the name of their great-grandson actually coincides with a certain character of their grandfather.
Fortunately, the old man in the neighborhood pointed it out, so it didn’t become a joke.
2. Naming according to seniority is a traditional Chinese custom. Why is it not popular anymore?
Don’t we want to do it?
No!
It’s because we don’t have the ability to implement this method!
Because we can no longer find a reference basis for naming according to seniority!
3. Why did our ancestors invent the method of naming according to seniority?
I am afraid that as the family grows and spreads, many years later, my family will be separated from each other, and they will not know each other, and they will not know each other!
Although many dynasty changes and wars and plagues in Chinese history have impacted the custom of naming according to seniority, it still stubbornly persisted and eventually disappeared in Posi. Old movement.
4. Only when elders and younger ones are in order and seniority is clear can people have etiquette to follow when interacting with others.
Being polite can make interactions between familiar and stranger people more comfortable and appropriate.
If you meet a strange person with the same surname in a foreign land and start a conversation, you find that you can tell from each other's names that you and him have the same ancestor. No matter who is the elder, they will feel close to each other.
Isn’t this a touching thing?
Because the last batch of those born in the 1980s who care about seniority are already old, and those who are in work or in the city, their descendants basically do not return to their hometowns. In my hometown, except for the generation born in the 1980s, the next generation no longer has the concept of kinship. The most important thing is that in the process of urbanization, the concept of clan has become weak.
It is good to name according to seniority. If you string together the words of seniority, you will find the expectations of your ancestors for future generations. My father did not name me according to my seniority. His name was only two characters, the surname plus a single character. Later, when I had a son, I decisively named me according to my seniority. I thought it was very good. No matter where I go, I will see the same person in the future. People with the same surname in the seniority will definitely ask where their hometown is.
Due to work and family relationships, I have been away from my hometown for more than 20 years. I have lived and worked in the capital city of our province for a long time. I only occasionally return to my hometown on weekends or during the Chinese New Year.
In the village where I live, almost 90% of the people have the surname Bi.
This situation is very common in our hometown. There is often a big surname and a big clan in a village.
In the 1990s when I was a child, including before the 1990s, people in the village had seniority, and the elders and clan leaders in the village would regularly compile family trees.
For example, the poem ranking of our family tree is "Benevolence, justice, etiquette, wisdom and trust, the family's merits will last forever".
Because I am from the generation of "Shi", when I meet a person named "Bi Gong" in the village, I know that this is a person from my father's generation. No matter how I call the person, I will always call him "someone". "Uncle" or "Uncle".
I know those people who are called "Bi Shimou" are of the same generation as me. If they are older than me, I will call them "Brother X", and if they are younger than me, I will call them "Brother X".
Later, as young people went out to work, worked, and settled in other places, the old people in the village gradually withered and died, the poems were exhausted, and there was no one to compile the genealogy, the problem emerged.
When young people later name their children, they have already begun to name them based on personal preferences or what is popular at the moment.
During the Spring Festival just two years ago, I went back to my hometown to celebrate the New Year.
When I went to the ancestral hall with my tribe to pay homage, a young man in his twenties greeted me on the way.
The young man said: Brother, lend me a fire, and I will light a cigarette.
After saying that, he took out a huazi and handed it to me.
I took Hua Zi and said half-jokingly: "You little brother, you are a third-level smoker, with cigarettes but no fire."
He finished listening He also burst out laughing.
He and I chatted a lot along the way, shouting one after another.
I asked him what his name was, and he replied "Bi Haoxuan".
When I heard the name all over the street, I didn’t know his seniority, so I could only call him little brother.
After arriving at the ancestral grave and meeting up with other members of the clan, this young man started talking to me like an elder brother.
At this time, his father came over and slapped him on the forehead: What do you call him big brother? The seniority is messed up. You have to call him (referring to me) grandpa!
The young man stuck out his tongue, smacked his lips, and smiled awkwardly.
This incident made me dumbfounded.
When I was chatting with people in the tribe about this matter, everyone felt the same way.
Yes, when we were young, when we met someone in the village, we would know whether we should call him uncle or brother as soon as we heard the name. Now, when young people in the village meet, they only look at their age. The older ones all call me brother, and I can’t tell the seniority or who is who.
On the way back later, I was still thinking about this.
In fact, for various reasons, there are reasons why "names based on generation" are no longer popular.
Take our village as an example. First, the generation rankings have been exhausted, and there are no people with high levels of traditional culture and profound Chinese studies to continue the generation, which has caused a generation gap. Young people have no seniority.
Secondly, many young people nowadays have popular names. In some primary school classes, there are several names with the same name, such as Zixuan, Zixuan, Ruohan, Haoxuan... ...and so on, they all have the same name.
Thirdly, more and more young people in the village are going to live in big cities and do not pay much attention to the inheritance of rural traditional culture. Especially modern people think that they are educated after graduating from college. I don’t want to follow the rules when naming my children.
With these three factors in mind, fewer and fewer people are looking for the generational rankings in the family tree.
In fact, our village is just a microcosm of the whole country. There are many people out there, just like us here, who no longer choose names according to "seniority."
I don’t know if this is regression or progress, the end of traditional culture, or the popularity of today’s culture.
However, I always feel that there are many disadvantages to this. For example, the situation I encountered when I returned to my hometown often made people dumbfounded and embarrassed. Young people's sense of identification with clan culture is getting lower and lower, and their sense of belonging to the countryside is getting weaker and weaker.
There is no popular or unpopular, and the ranking of generations is not a temporary one. It is passed down from generation to generation. However, many people now learn from the West and forget their ancestors. They feel that their ancestors are useless and their family affection has become indifferent. Years later, when the children ask their grandparents who are their brothers and sisters? I’m afraid his father doesn’t even know where he came from or where he’s going
I am born in the 1990s, and my cousins ??are Yushun, Yujian, Yuzhang, and Yufen. , Yuzhen, Yuli, Yuxiang. From their names, you can tell they are brothers and sisters. Ha ha.
People in the past attached great importance to family. Names were given according to seniority, surnames were fixed, and which characters were used for which generation. In most cases, you only had to add one character yourself. It becomes your name. When others hear the name, they will know clearly which tribe and generation this person belongs to. However, two of the three characters in such a name are shared by many people, and the choice is narrow. It is also difficult to form an ideal meaning for people's names. Most of them are mechanical, awkward, and have more accents.
But now many people no longer name their children according to their seniority, and no longer stick to the old rules of the past. Besides, parents have a higher level of education, and most of them will name their children according to their own hobbies and wishes. When you name your child, you can choose the word or sound you like according to your own hobbies. You are not restricted by seniority arrangements. You also have a wider range of choices, so that your child's name has a more complete meaning and can better play the role of name culture.
Since the reform and opening up, great changes have taken place in society. A large number of rural people have entered the city. The population is no longer settled by one clan and one village. Family-style villages have gradually disappeared. Tradition has gradually been ignored. People are not willing to let the name that will accompany their children throughout their lives rest on other people's arrangement. Naming according to their own wishes can better reflect their own wishes, and can also avoid some unfavorable pronunciations in the name and avoid misunderstandings about the same name and homophony. It is also the progress of social development.
Just to see if you care, my family has always insisted on naming according to seniority. My daughter does not need to. She has been admitted to the top of the class and studied at the Jingshi University. Now she has been ranked in the Jingzi generation of my son. I can still manage the grandchildren. , I am responsible for passing the words on to my son, and I have no control over whether they are arranged in rows or not
Naming according to seniority can also be understood as respecting the inheritance of genealogy and genealogy, which is a traditional Chinese clan concept. Clan beliefs, ancestor worship and religious beliefs have very high similarities. Not naming people according to their seniority just shows their lack of faith.
There are many reasons for this, mainly caused by the following points:
1. It turns out that it is a family relationship. The whole family is together and will not separate unless it is absolutely necessary. It is divided into long houses, two and three bedrooms, and has a large population. Nowadays, getting married means living alone, and there is no such thing as a family.
2. In the past, there was a pyramid model. A grandfather gave birth to three sons, and each of the three sons gave birth to three more. By the third generation, there were nine!
3. Modern people pay less and less attention to family ties, and family ties are gradually fading.
4. Forty or fifty years ago, the Four Olds were destroyed, the genealogy was lost, and future generations did not know it.
The most important thing is that now family planning is in place, forming an inverted triangle, with three brothers, two girls and one boy. If a boy gives birth to a girl, as the old saying goes: this one of the three brothers will be dead, so there is no need to arrange them.
This way there is no way to arrange it!