Two thousand years ago, Duke Huan, the king of Lu, was also worried about naming his son. For this reason, he asked a knowledgeable Lu official, Shen Sui. Therefore, Mr. Shen made a speech about naming his children. The excerpt is as follows:
“There are five kinds of names: trust, meaning, image, falsehood, and category. Names are used to create things. Faith takes virtue and fate as its righteousness, takes its destiny as its image, takes things as falsehood, and takes its father as its kind. Coin."
This passage contains the five basic principles and six taboos of pre-Qin people. The six taboos were actually broken at that time, but the five basic principles can be used to help us understand the weirdness of pre-Qin names.
The letter is named after certain characteristics of the child at birth, which includes both the child's physiological characteristics and special conditions before and after birth. For example, the "black buttocks" mentioned in the title are named after the physiological characteristics of the child. Characteristic naming, and "夤生" is named after the specific conditions at birth (dystocia);
Meaning means naming with beautiful words and giving hope in the name. This is the empathy of ancient and modern times. For example, the famous unlucky man Bian He in the Spring and Autumn Period;
Xiang refers to naming similar things. Specifically, it means naming things with similar characteristics to the child. The most famous example is Confucius, "Historical Records" "It is said that Confucius "was born with his head on the top of the polder, so he was named Qiu Yun." Here it is said that Confucius was born with a sunken head, so he was named Qiu. It should be noted that we currently interpret the word Qiu as It is a convex hill, but in "Shuowen Jiezi" it is said that "the four directions are high, and the center is a hill". This should be the meaning of Confucius' name.
False refers to borrowing the name of something to name it. For example, we can see that people in the pre-Qin era especially liked to use the word "mortar" to name their names, such as Ji Yijiu, the king of Zhou Ping, Gongsun Chujiu, the famous righteous man, etc. , the name is borrowed from the mortar here. In fact, the mortar for pounding rice is a symbol of solidity, and this thing can also be associated with agricultural harvests;
Class means using words related to father. Naming, for example, the Duke Huan of Lu mentioned above named his son "Tong" because his son had the same birthday as himself. I can also cite a novel character to illustrate this naming principle. Then It was Yang Guo. His father had Guo, so he was named "Guo".
After reading this, everyone should have a certain understanding of the naming methods in the pre-Qin era. In fact, it is not that people have strange names, but that our naming methods and views on things have changed. Now we Physical characteristics are rarely used in names. We think it will inevitably be indecent or bring ridicule to children, but the ancients didn't mind. Now we don't think "mortar" is a beautiful symbol, but the ancients loved them. To put it bluntly, we think the names of ancient people in Pre-Qin are strange because most people today are unfamiliar with some pre-Qin culture.