Qing emperors named their sons. Why did the words become more and more uncommon?

Because the emperor can use uncommon words, some common words can't be used well because he wants to avoid the emperor's name, and the Qing royal family also attaches great importance to this taboo of Chinese names. Therefore, in order to make the common words better used by the people, the emperor took the initiative to change the names of his descendants into uncommon words.

In ancient times, there were many taboos in writing, especially the taboo of the emperor's name among the people. As early as the Han Dynasty, because the name of Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu contained the word "xiu", the scholar in the imperial examination was changed to "Mao Cai" at that time, in order to avoid the emperor's name, and even the emperor's name could not be mentioned when making a fuss. For the common people, it is very troublesome for the emperor's name to be too simple. During the Qianlong period, the word "calendar" was changed to "Yi" because the emperor's name had the word "calendar", so it was very troublesome for the people to have the emperor's name too simple.

At that time, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty also noticed this problem, especially after Qianlong was asked to change the name "calendar" to "sunset" because of his own name. Therefore, when Emperor Jiaqing succeeded to the throne, he asked Jiaqing to take the initiative to change the word "forever" in his name to "parallel". Because in Qianlong's view, the word "forever" is a common word among the people, Jiaqing was forced to change its name before he ascended the throne in order not to make the people too troublesome. Jiaqing also continued the concept of Qianlong and changed the name of his child Daoguang, which gradually led to the Qing emperor's increasingly uncommon name for his son.

Therefore, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty liked to use uncommon words to name their descendants more and more, not to show their own culture, but to make such a decision for the consideration of the people.