The word generation, also called the word "pai", refers to the characters used in names to express the family's seniority (mostly the characters in the middle of the name), commonly known as "pai". Its meaning is to cultivate one's moral character and manage one's family, to bring peace to the people and govern the country, to be auspicious, healthy and prosperous. Zi generation is an important naming form that has been passed down for thousands of years in China. It is also a special "ritual" system in ancient China, which has continued to modern times. Due to various reasons, since the 1970s and 1980s, generation genealogy has become unfamiliar to the world, and this phenomenon is even more obvious among the younger generation.
There is an ancient saying: "Giving a child a thousand pieces of gold is not as good as teaching a child a skill; teaching a child a skill is not as good as giving a child a good name." It can be seen that the ancients paid special attention to naming. In ancient times, parents paid special attention to naming their children before they were born. I will think hard about the name of my child. In the eyes of the ancients, a name is not only a label and symbol of a person, but also carries a person's spirit, emotions and will, which can improve luck and future to a certain extent.
This article will talk about the past naming customs and naming customs of the Han people in Sichuan.
The Han people’s surname custom originated in the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties. At that time, it was popular for some children of wealthy families to be named after their generation. By the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the custom of naming generations had become popular in many areas. Before the 1970s and 1980s, most Sichuan people were named according to their generation. After that, the generation genealogy gradually became unfamiliar to Sichuan people.
1. Generations, clan names and names
(1) Generations are commonly referred to as sects, lines, and sect orders, which are used to indicate the blood order of the same family lineage. Name the sequence.
During the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, Sichuan people’s names generally consisted of three characters. The first character is the surname, which was passed down from the ancestors and cannot be changed. The second character is usually the character for generation (there are also a few families who put the character for generation in the third character). The third character is taken by the parents, usually the father.
The names given by generation are called "family names" and "spectrum names".
According to the "List of Kings" in Volume 100 of "History of the Ming Dynasty": During the Hongwu period, Taizu saw that he had many descendants and was afraid of duplication in naming, so he drew up twenty crosses for each of the East Palace and North King lineages. One character represents one life, and it is stipulated that descendants must be given double names according to their generation. The upper character is named according to the generation, and the next character is named according to the radicals of the "Five Elements" (in order of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth).
During the Ming Dynasty, the King of Shu ruled Shu for more than 200 years. All the kings of Shu were named according to their seniority, which had a great influence on the naming customs in Sichuan. By the middle and late Ming Dynasty, naming according to generation had been widely promoted in Sichuan. For example, the Pu family in Guang'an, Sichuan, was named according to their generation at least in the fifth generation after they entered Sichuan. The ancestor of General Li Jiayu, the Hongya Li family, was also named according to their seniority in the Ming Dynasty. The royal family of the Qing Dynasty also chose names strictly according to generation, and local officials and ordinary people also followed suit.
In the early Qing Dynasty, after immigrants from other places immigrated to Sichuan, a considerable number of people re-established the "zi genealogy" as "first immigrants", and some people still continued to use the previous character genealogy. When a small number of immigrants first entered Sichuan, they were not named according to their generation, or in other words, they had no generation. However, after two or three generations, their names were determined and their descendants could be named according to their generation. For example, there are Guojiaba and Guoshangou 6 kilometers northeast of Dayi County, where the Guo family is concentrated. His first immigrant ancestor, Guo Fu, entered Sichuan in the early Qing Dynasty. At that time, he was not named according to his seniority. Three generations later, he began to be named according to his seniority.
The name given according to seniority is the clan name. Clan name, Sichuan people usually call it "Daming".
The words used in the Zigenpu may not seem to have much meaning when viewed individually, but when combined together, they often form a profoundly meaningful rhyme poem. Generally, it has the meaning of educating future generations to work hard, respect the old and love the young, be upright, be loyal and filial, and pass down poems and books to the family. There are several important principles when determining the generation of characters: after the ancestors have determined it, descendants cannot change it no matter how capable they are; within the same family of characters, the same characters should be avoided; when the last character on the generation tree starts to be used, the clan leader or Parents have the responsibility to compile a new generation genealogy for future generations. The number of characters in the new genealogy and the old genealogy should be the same.
For example: Luojiang Li family (Tiaoyuan) clan generation sequence: "The court upholds morality and justice, and the court is green. The reputation of filial friends is far away, and the merits of ancestors are long."
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The second generation of the Pu family in Guang'an is "the golden palace honors the ancestors, the Huating shows the ancestors, the new prosperity brings beauty, the handsome hair is prosperous, the prosperity is prosperous, the merits are made from generation to generation, and the sky is virtuous. The industry is wide and good. "
The generation of the Luo family in Luobugou, Banjiang, Suining: "The young Yuan Dynasty was Zhengguo, and Sida was in the imperial court; Ever new. ”
The Shuangliu Liu family is arranged in descending order according to the hexagrams of the Book of Changes, namely Xian, Heng, Jin, Tai, Qian, Yi, Lu, Feng, Sui, Sheng, Fu, Ben, Xun, Bi, The sixteen hexagrams of Shi, Meng, etc. also stipulate that each generation must be named according to the order of the five elements, that is, water, wood, fire, earth, and metal are the radicals of the name. For example, the name of the Xian generation must have fire as the radical; Heng. The generation of the character must use earth as the radical.
The generation of the Li family in Pujiang is: "The Hong and Han Dynasties are ascending, the country is prosperous like a family, the benevolence of nature is there, and the ancestors are alive from generation to generation. "
The ranking of the Liu family in Anren, Dayi is: "Ying Chao Fang Han succeeded, and he served as an official in the Yuan Dynasty. The world's virtuous people can be prosperous, abide by the Tao and speak good words. Doing good deeds brings happiness, and this is a fixed branch. Peace brings justice, and all generations come from the same source. "
There are very few characters with the same two characters. In order to avoid confusion, there are also some specific treatment methods. For example, the character generation of the Mou family in Guankou, Dayi is "The Bingwen family is big. Good academic performance. Cultivate your character and respect morality, do good deeds and maintain peace. "There are two characters for "karma" in it. The genealogy clearly stipulates that when naming, the first character for "karma" in the generation must be placed in the next character in the double name, that is, the third character in the name; The two characters of industry are placed in the previous character of the double name, which is the second character of the name.
(2) According to the old custom in Sichuan, only the father, grandfather, or elders of the paternal line have the right. The specific time for naming a child is not completely consistent among different ethnic groups. Some are within a few days of the child's birth, some are after the child is one month old, and some have to wait until the child turns three years old. After.
Many famous people in modern Sichuan are almost named according to their seniority.
For example: Zhang Daqian, whose original name is Zhang Zhengquan, is based on the Zhang family's "honesty first". " Ba Jin, whose original name was Li Yaotang, was named according to the Li family's lineage of "Tao Yao governed the country, the family was prosperous and prosperous, diligently cultivated virtues, and kept the fragrance of books for generations". His ancestors moved from Jiaxing, Zhejiang, and the new According to the generation, Ba Jin was the second generation after entering Sichuan. Li Jieren's father began to name according to his generation. He was named Li Jiaxiang in the seniority sequence of "the elder of the bureaucracy".
According to the custom of the Qing Dynasty, women generally did not take their clan names, nor were they formally given names. For example, if the original surname was Zhang, after marrying into the Li family, Named Li Zhang, the husband's surname is placed in the front and the father's surname is placed in the middle. This expresses the society in which "if you marry a chicken, follow the chicken, if you marry a dog, follow the dog" and "A married woman will be splashed with water". Concept. For example, Li Jieren's (1891-1962) great-grandmother Li Zhou, his grandmother Li Peng, and his mother Li Yang can be referred to as Zhou, Peng, and Yang on many occasions.
The main function of family names. There are three: it reflects the blood inheritance relationship of the individual, enables the descendants of the family to pass on the inheritance in an orderly and clear manner, and clearly reflects the position of each person in the blood chain; it further strengthens the clan on the basis of the surname. Imprinting provides a powerful reference to prevent future generations from marrying in the same clan (which is a step further than the "no marriage with the same surname" in ancient times) and close relatives not marrying; through the family tree and family name, you can understand the family's history of struggle and promote their efforts and achievements. , to promote the virtues of respecting the elderly, caring for the young, and uniting and helping each other.
After the "May 4th" New Culture Movement, some media and progressive people advocated the "one-person system" and opposed the distinction of people's names into clan names. But the impact was very small, and only a few people in the city responded. After the New Culture Movement, the government began to require women to also have names when conducting relevant registrations. Clan and title names were given to girls. Many women who had no names in the past were also given names during this period. Unmarried women were usually given names by their fathers, and married women were given names by their husbands.
(3) Font size
In the past, in addition to the family name, the names of Sichuan people also had a character, which was also called font size or name. There is usually some connection between the font size and the family name in a literal sense. As Luo Ting said, with the courtesy name Bo Zhang, he could speak well in the court and write the best articles. This is of course because the person who named him was very eager to see his son succeed.
Li Jie gave his daughter the family name Li Yuanshan. According to "the distant mountains are like daisy", daisy means eyebrow, and they also gave her the family name Li Mei. The standard saying is: Li Yuanshan, also known as eyebrow.
Selecting a font size requires a certain amount of cultural knowledge. In the past, in rural areas of central Sichuan, teachers or fortune tellers were usually asked to do it for children when they were "enlightened" to study. After the 1930s, local governments began to implement the "one-name system" when handling household registration, military conscription, taxation, school enrollment, labor recruitment, etc., that is, only one name was recognized, and the registrants were allowed to choose between clan names and titles.
At that time, most Sichuan people believed that clan names were more dignified than household names. Generally, they could only be called by clan members and should not be called casually by outsiders. They generally chose household names for household registration. Therefore, the people implement the parallel system of clan name and title name. In newspapers and periodicals at that time, it was also common to use clan names and titles together.
After the 1950s, the People's Government adopted a one-person system. Not only are the one-person system used in household registration, labor recruitment, cadre recruitment, and enrollment, but also in news media such as newspapers, magazines, and radio stations. From then on, when most families named their children, they only chose one name. Most families only named their children after their clan name, that is, they named their children according to their generation, and no longer named them after their family name. During this period, some families only gave boys clan names, while girls gave other names.
After the 1950s, many traditional clan customs were considered to be "remnants of feudalism" and banned, and the naming style of Sichuan people also changed.
First of all, some people believe that a name is just a symbol without actual content and can be changed at will. They even think that naming by generation is a factor of "feudal culture" and completely deny it. As a result, many people no longer name themselves by generation. Many names associated with political movements began to appear. Such as "resisting the United States" and "aiding Korea" related to the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea. During the "Cultural Revolution", people changed their old names. For a time, "Weidong", "Weihong", "Yongge", "Xiangdong" and other fashionable names appeared in large numbers.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the custom of using single names appeared again among the people. The vast majority of babies born in this period have a single name, and the proportion of babies born with the same name is high. It is no longer possible to distinguish generational blood relations from the names, and it is easy to have the adverse consequences of incest.
(1) Characteristics of the times
In addition to the above-mentioned naming based on generation, Sichuan people also have some interesting characteristics. From the perspective of the difference between urban and rural areas, rural people tend to choose simple names, while urban people tend to choose elegant names. From an industry perspective, businessmen are given names that emphasize money, soldiers are given names that emphasize martial arts, and teachers are given names that emphasize Confucianism.
Judging from the characteristics of the times, each era has its own naming characteristics. For example: During the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, Sichuan people often used words related to traditional culture, traditional thoughts, and traditional moral standards in naming: loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, righteousness, integrity, Hui, Ting, Xi, etc. Secondly, there is often the custom of naming according to ranking sequence. Common ones are:
1. With Bo, Zhong, and Ji as the order, and the third character is used according to generation;
2. With metal, wood, water, and fire , soil "Five Elements" as the preface, there are many specific ways to choose it: (1) Use its radicals: For example, when naming the eldest child, use iron, copper, beryllium, zodiac, etc. next to gold; when naming the second child, use "wood" next to it. Xiang, Li, Ji, Jie, etc.; (2) Use words with the same attributes and similar meanings, such as: gold and copper, wood and tree, water and snow, fire and thunder, fierce, sun, earth and mountain, etc. (3) Use this word directly. 3. The numbers are in order, and the numbers are called big, two, three, four, and five.
In early 1950, after Sichuan was liberated, some people named their children after "Liberation" and "New Life". In 1958, the climax of the "Great Leap Forward", "Three Red Flags" and "People's Communes" was launched. Many people gave their children the words "Leap", "Leap Forward", "Red Flag", "Gong", "Commune" and "Commune". name.
After the Great Leap Forward, it became fashionable to give children single names in cities and towns. Single names such as Zhang Wei, Li Wei, and Wang Jun can be seen almost everywhere.
In the 1960s and 1970s, children were often named after "red", "east", "bing" and "guard". From a traditional perspective. Until the 1970s, Sichuan people generally wanted to have more children, which was also reflected in their naming. Many people name their first child "De (De) Qun" in the hope of giving birth to another group; if the first child is a daughter, some people name them "Zhao (Chao, Zhao) Di" or "Sheng Di" , hoping to attract his younger brother.
After the 1980s, some people gave their children "foreign names"; in the 1990s, computers and the Internet became fashionable, and some people also liked to name their children using terms used in computers and the Internet. , such as: Moton, Inte. The custom of using single names has resulted in the common phenomenon of students with the same surname and name in primary and secondary schools, causing many unnecessary misunderstandings.
(2) Nicknames
Nicknames are also called milk names, baby names, and baby names. Usually, the child is given a random name on the day it is born or a few days later, without being elegant. Parents have the right to give their children nicknames, and even other elders, neighbors, brothers, etc. can give their children nicknames. People in Sichuan believe that children should grow up more easily if their nicknames are cheap. Therefore, "Gou Wazi" and "Li Wazi" are the most common ones.
There is another category based on the order of birth, called "Dawazi", "Erwazi", "Sanwazi", "Dameizi", "Yaomeizi" and so on. Guo Moruo once wrote: "My mother said that when I was conceived, she dreamed of a leopard cub biting the mouth of her left hand, and she woke up. Therefore, my nickname was Wenbao." When Li Jieren was born, it was the Dragon Boat Festival. Just after the festival, his parents gave him the nickname "Duan Duan", commonly known as "Duan Wazi".
(3) Nicknames, nicknames, and nicknames
Folks in Sichuan still have the custom of giving people nicknames, nicknames, and nicknames. Generally, outsiders take it for them, and the parties involved may not necessarily know or agree with it. Some people involved are very disgusted with these nicknames.
The methods of selection are generally as follows:
According to physiological appearance. People with pockmarks on their faces are often called "Pockmarked" according to their surnames; those with short stature are often called "dwarfs"; tall men are often called "big men"; those with disabled feet are often called "Pockmarked" according to their surnames. People with hand disabilities are called "claw hands"; people who are fat are called "fatty"; people who wear glasses are called "glasses" or "four-eyed dog". After entering the 1980s, outsiders often referred to young and middle-aged male glasses wearers as "eye brothers" whom they did not know.
Taken according to occupation. For example, a tinker named Wang is called "Wang Tinker" by acquaintances. In the 1980s, male taxi drivers were often referred to as "Brother" and female drivers were called "Sister".
According to his deeds: Zhao Erfeng, the governor of Sichuan in the late Qing Dynasty, killed many people and was called "Butcher Zhao" by the people. Li Jieren was older in the class and very charismatic. His classmates called him "Li Da" and "Jing Gong".
According to the higher degree: For example, a doctor named Sun is often called Dr. Sun.
(4) Pen names
Mostly popular among the intellectual class. The reasons for using a pseudonym are extremely complex. In the old days, many intellectuals used pen names when publishing articles to avoid "literary prison". For example, Guo Moruo, a famous Sichuan scholar, has used more than 30 pen names. Li Jieren, a famous Sichuan writer, wrote novels under the pseudonym "Lao Lalan" when he was young. Li Yaotang's pen name is Ba Jin. This custom still existed during the "Cultural Revolution". After the 1980s, the number of published works and their impact were related to the assessment of technical titles, and the number of people using pseudonyms decreased significantly. Today it is only seen in the literary and artistic circles.