There are many meanings you can tell from a Chinese name. Sometimes you can know when was he born, sometimes you can know what is he or his parents like. Let’s know something about Chinese names.
China's huge population shares a great deal of surnames. According to the ancient Chinese documents, they ranged from 300 to 3,000. But most specialists in this field agree that the most common surnames of the Han Chinese number some 500.
Chinese surnames are said to have originated in the prehistorical matriarchal society. The character for surname, Xing (姓), is a combination of two other characters, Nv (女) and Sheng (生), meaning 'born of woman.' An ancient Chinese name often included four parts: first the family name, followed by the given name, the alias, and then what's known as the 'style.' Take the great poet Li Bai for example. His surname in Chinese is Li (李). His given name Bai (白) means 'white.' His alias is Tai Bai (太白), and 'style' Qing Lian (青莲), meaning 'green lotus.' One would choose his alias and 'style' when he entered adulthood. People called one another by the alias to show mutual respect.
Li Bai
Chinese people always attach great importance to the choice of names. As the old saying goes, under the right name, then can it be within your jurisdiction. In the Chinese earliest dictionary it was explained as follows: name contained the invisible fate and the visible and meaning characters. Fate was something intangible and negative, it coincided with 'the hidden material,' on which the Western scientists are working hard to find out. With concrete form and meaning, name belonged to the positive symbol of characters. It functioned far more than just a code for every specific person. Therefore in the past, when elders named a new born baby, they took several factors into full consideration: the astrological principles, the birthdate, the array of five elements (metal, wood, water, fire, and earth) told by the fortune-teller, the form, pronunciation, and meaning of name. Now superstition being lessened and constraints reduced, there are still some rules of thumb to be followed:
1, balance between the baby's birthdate and the five elements in its life, try to remedy the defects with the name;
2, try to avoid the same initial consonant and simple or compound vowel (of a Chinese syllable), and the same tone in the characters is not preferred either;
3, as to the form, a character with not too many strokes nor the same component will be a good choice;
4, the preference for the meaning of a character changes with time.
The May Fourth Movement in 1919 brought with it what was known as the 'vernacular Campaign' and drastic changes in Chinese culture. So did it influence names. It contended all sorts of characters could be used to form a person's name. Then after the founding of New China, name began to take on a political touch, such as 'Ai Guo' which means 'love the country' and so on. The favorite words included: red, army, revolution, soldier, east, etc.
Another obvious change in Chinese name is that many people now use only two characters. A study shows that, before 1966, about 90 percent of chinese names had three characters. But a recent survey tells us that about half of today's younger people have two character names.
