Ou has many opinions, even inconclusive.
1. "Ou" is a utensil?
Some scholars believe that Ou is a kind of utensil for storing things. It is said that in ancient times, due to the large-scale production of this kind of utensils called "Ou" in what is now Wenzhou, the word "Ou" was used to name this place. The word "OU" appears next to the word "tile", which is obvious and easy to understand. It should refer to Xiaofang State, a country with a developed pottery and kiln industry. However, some experts expressed objections. Although the interpretation of "Ou" in ancient books is "small basin", its appearance and other characteristics are different from small basins, small bowls, small bowls, cups, tea pots, tea cups and other utensils. How big the difference is and where it lies is yet to be determined. Furthermore, in some early documents related to "Ou", there is no relevant statement about southern Zhejiang. Even "Yue Ou", which first appeared in some poems of the Tang Dynasty, was actually very late, and "Yue Ou" mostly refers to Ou kiln celadon, which only appeared in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. In this way, the statement that the Ou ware was named after the Ou people invented it seems to be trapped in an irresolvable contradiction.
2. Is "Ou" a native of Ou?
Huang Xianfan's "General History of the Zhuang Nationality" said: ""Ou" and "District" have the same sound. "Shuowen": "Ou,... the sound of District". "For Wuhouqie". Therefore "Ou" Zuo clan name refers to the people who live near the water. Liu Shipei said in his "An Examination of the Founding of the Ancient South": "Ou is a rugged hiding place. The words "Cong District" all have the meaning of "qu". Therefore, all dangerous places with mountains and forests are called Ou. There are many forests in the south, so the ancients called them Ou, and they were named Ou people. Ou is named because of the many dangerous mountains and forests in the land. It can be seen that because the south is full of dangerous mountains, forests, valleys and lakes, the people living here are called Ou people. Ou, or written as "椤", "区", and "欧", is The clan names of the Yue people in the earlier period are as follows: Yiyin is the Sifang Order, there are "Yuechen" in the east, and "Ou people" in the south. Luo Mi of the Song Dynasty records that among the Yue and Ou countries. : "Yue Ou" means in Luoli County, Hepu. "Ouyu" means that there is Ouyu Mountain twenty miles east of Wucheng. "Oudeng" is the border of Chu State. During the Zhou and Qin Dynasties, people often called the Yue people on the southeast coast the Ou people, Qieou, Yueshen, and Yueyu. The people of Lingnan were called Luren, Oudeng and Luo Yue, probably because the names were complicated and unclear. Later, people combined the original names with the geographical location of the Yue people. The Yue people distributed on the southeast coast were called Dongyue or Dongyue. "Dong Ou" refers to some people living in Lingnan as "Xi Yue" or "Xi Ou". It can be seen that the name Xiou is the address of the people of Ou plus a localizer. The reason why it is called Xiou is obviously to distinguish it from Dongou. "" Sun Yirang, a scholar in the late Qing Dynasty who had a profound study of Wenzhou's historical anecdotes, also advocated that these words are "real and the same", which means that these words are interoperable.
Looking at the radical of the word "OU", according to "Shuowen Jiezi", it is, "Qu, - District, Zang Yinye, Congpin, in 博中, meaning It refers to the appearance of hills and mountains in the bay. In 1988, Jin Zuming believed that the words "district" and "ou" should refer to a larger area surrounded by water on three or four sides. A small country like an island or a continent. "椤" means a small country with deep water on all sides and many rapids and blisters.
In 1990, Zhu Junming wrote an article explaining "Ou". He advocated "Ou". Refers to the Ou people, who originated from the area around Taihu Lake and Hangzhou Bay. Mr. Zhu believes that "Ou" is not a Chinese vocabulary. "Zhou Li·Zhi Fangshi" says: "The southeast is called Yangzhou...its swamp is called Ju District. "The "Gu District" here should refer to the many small lakes in southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang during the Pre-Qin Dynasty, especially the large and small islands that were divided by water in the coastal areas. In the local indigenous language, "Ju District" means This is a general name for water swamps. For the people who live near these swamps and nearby islands, they are called "Ou people" because of their special environmental ecology, which is essentially "Ou people" and "Ou people". "Gu area" is the Chinese language's two translation methods for the stuck pronunciation of the same vocabulary of the Ou people: urgent and slow.
According to records in "Shangshu" and "Historical Records", "The Huaihai Sea is only Yangzhou, and... Daoyi Huifu" means these "Ou people" who live in the water and on land are translated as "Daoyi", and "The Classic of Mountains and Seas·Hai Nei" The Southern Classic says that "Ou lives in the sea" is consistent with this. In this sense, "Daoyi" seems to be the most accurate free translation of "Ou people" made by Chinese people based on the characteristics of the geographical environment.
3. "Ou" is a sacred bird?
Cai Kejiao believes that studying the ancient history of Wenzhou using traditional textual research methods similar to the above is in danger of running into trouble. Therefore, he tried to use totem worship method to interpret this historical mystery. Totem is a foreign word. Yan Fu believes that totem is a symbol of a group and is intended to distinguish groups. Marx once made an essential definition of it, saying that "totem" represents the mark or symbol of the clan. It is a "deified" mark or symbol.
Cai Kejiao once wrote that from a large amount of archaeological, philological, ethnological and other materials, it was found that most of the ethnic groups on the southeast coast have bird totems. So, what would be the totem of the Ou people? Ou is close to the East China Sea. For the Ou people who live on coastal lands and islands, the most common bird is the Ou (gull). The bird was named Ou because of the sound of its chirping. It is not uncommon among ancient Chinese peoples to call an animal by its sound and use that animal as the clan name.
In view of the close connection between the Ou bird and the life of the Ou people, including the fact that the initial economic life of the Ou ancestors living on the coast at that time was mainly fishing and hunting, a large number of Ou birds were shot, which affected the Ou people. source of human life. In order to protect the ecology and survive, the Ou people entered the stage of totem worship in the Neolithic Age, and the Ou bird became a sacred bird. The famous archaeologist Xia Nai mentioned in the "Preface to the Catalog of Neolithic Artifacts in Zhejiang" that among the Neolithic artifacts unearthed in Wenzhou, the majority of arrowheads are a characteristic of Wenzhou.
When the Ou people's production methods gradually changed to primitive agriculture, making and using pottery, and the Central Plains area had entered a civilized society at this time, with the gradual strengthening of contacts with the outside world, the Wenzhou area where the Ou people were active Hence the name "Ou".