Everyone is born with a name. It's just two or three simple words, which will accompany us throughout this life. In ancient China, special emphasis was placed on naming children, because names not only express parents’ expectations and wishes for their children, but are also an important indicator of family status. In ancient China, families lived in the same area. In order to highlight the order of elders and younger ones and the distinction between seniority and inferiority, the patriarch of a large family would set family rules and write a family tree in the family ancestral hall.
In order to distinguish the seniority, the clan leader will use characters to identify seniority. In other words, people of the same generation must have the same character in their names. For example, in a rural area under the Qinling Mountains in the south, the names of the generation of 1970s all have the word "海" in their names. Anyone born in the 1970s can choose any name, but the word "海" must be included in it. Only those who follow the rules can be recognized by the family and included in the genealogy. This is Rules, and this kind of rules are particularly common in vast rural areas.
The habit of naming according to seniority has been around since ancient times, because it is a habit that has been established by people. It was in the Ming Dynasty that it was finally established as a system. In order to distinguish the seniority among members of the royal family, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, personally defined the seniority for the princes and princes, and the successors must strictly abide by it.
Sure enough, the successors did not disappoint him. For example, the descendants of Zhu Di, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, have always followed the rules of "Gaozhan Qi Jianyou, Hou Zaiyi Changyou, Ciheyi Bozhong, Jian Jingdi Xianyou" These words are used to name descendants and to distinguish seniority. It's a pity that the Ming Dynasty perished when this generation only used the word "ci", and no one knows whether there is a later one. In addition to the Han people who have this custom, most other ethnic groups also have this custom. For example, take the Manchu people. After Dingding Central Plains, successive emperors were named based on their seniority.
However, since the 1990s, the rule of determining seniority by name has been broken little by little, and more and more people have begun not to name their children according to the names on the genealogy. The name determines the seniority, but the child is named according to his own preferences. Why is the popular naming based on seniority no longer popular? In fact, such changes have a lot to do with socioeconomic and cultural changes.
First of all, the fundamental reason is that the traditional family system is being broken bit by bit by modern society. In ancient times, it was not uncommon for a village to have its own surname. People in the village relied on a self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy and generally would not leave the land to go outside. However, with the collapse of the small-scale peasant economy, the market economy began to rise, especially after the 1980s, my country's economy developed rapidly. More and more people are moving from rural areas to working and living in cities. After two or three generations, the relationship with the family will fade away, so naturally people will not be named according to their seniority.
The second reason lies in the dilution of traditional culture. Impacted by trendy new ideas, people are becoming less and less fond of the ancient red tape. There are some embarrassing problems when choosing a name based on seniority, that is, if your family has a higher seniority, even if you are a child, your seniority may be higher than that of an old man or woman. In that feudal society, old men and women might even bow to their children. Is this the case now? Even if old men and women can accept it, can young people accept it? So instead of being embarrassed, it would be better to break this way of naming people by generation, so that people can get along better and more harmoniously.
In addition, naming without seniority is also related to the birth population. Everyone knows that in ancient China, many children were valued, so every family would have ten or eight children. It would be difficult to manage and distinguish so many children if they were not named according to seniority, so that method was used. However, since the reform and opening up, our country has advocated that a couple only raise one child, and pays attention to having fewer children and eugenics, so at that time most families only had one child. Naturally, there is nothing to distinguish between the children, so parents choose names more casually.
So the development of social economy has increasingly eliminated the role of names in distinguishing seniority, and names only serve as code names.
It is precisely because of this that parents in every family pay special attention to naming their children, because even as a code name, it must have the best meaning and blessing, so that it can show the parents' meticulous care for their children. love.