中国人的名字有什么讲究？
How do Chinese names work?
Name: ________________ Date: ________
在中国，如果你在街上喊一声“张伟”，可能会有不少人同时回头。根据公安部的统计，全国叫张伟的人将近三十万。为什么重名的人这么多？这要从中国人的名字说起。
中国人的姓名，姓氏放在前面，名字放在后面，跟英语正相反。比如“张伟”，张是姓氏，伟是名字。姓氏大多只有一个字，也有两个字的，叫作复姓，比如欧阳、诸葛。在中国大陆，女性结婚以后一般不改姓。孩子大多跟爸爸姓，不过法律上也可以跟妈妈姓。
中国的姓氏很多。古时候孩子认字用的《百家姓》，一共收了五百多个。排第一的是赵，因为《百家姓》是北宋时编的，当时的皇帝姓赵。可是常见的姓氏其实没几个。今天，王、李、张、刘、陈这五个大姓，加在一起占了全国人口的将近三分之一。而刘在《百家姓》里，排到了第二百五十二位。
大姓就这么几个，重不重名，关键就在名字上。名字一般是一两个字。二十世纪九十年代，单字名特别流行，很多孩子的名字只有一个字。伟、芳、静这样的字，用的人太多了，难怪张伟、王芳到处都是。现在的父母更喜欢两个字的名字，还爱挑不常见的字。2020年出生的宝宝里，最受欢迎的名字，男孩叫“奕辰”，女孩叫“一诺”。
以前，从名字里还能看出辈分。很多大家族会在家谱里定好一串字，每一代用一个。同一辈人的名字里都有同一个字，一看就知道是哪一辈的。
生活中，熟人之间不一定叫全名。年轻的同事常被叫作“小张”，年纪大一点的就成了“老张”。这里的“老”不是说你老，而是表示亲切和尊重。
外国人也可以有中文名字。美国有位历史学家叫费尔班克，一辈子都在研究中国。建筑学家梁思成给他起了个中文名，叫费正清。“费”像他的姓氏，“正清”听起来像他的名字，还有正直、清白的意思。
所以，如果你也想要一个中文名字，先别急着用，上网搜一搜再说。不然，你说不定就成了第三十万个张伟。
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 同时 | tóngshí | at the same time; simultaneously |
| 叫作 | jiàozuò | to be called; to be known as |
| 女性 | nǚxìng | woman; female; the female sex |
| 法律 | fǎlǜ | law |
| 排 | pái | to arrange; to line up |
| 当时 | dāngshí | then; at that time |
| 关键 | guānjiàn | key; crux; crucial point; crucial; pivotal |
| 流行 | liúxíng | popular; fashionable; to be popular; to be in fashion |
| 父母 | fùmǔ | parents; father and mother |
| 定 | dìng | to fix; to set |
| 之间 | zhījiān | between; among |
| 表示 | biǎoshì | to express; to indicate; to state |
English (for the teacher)
In China, if you shout “Zhang Wei” in the street, quite a few people may turn round at once. According to figures from the Ministry of Public Security, nearly 300,000 people in the country are called Zhang Wei. Why do so many people share a name? To answer that, we have to start with how Chinese names work.
In a Chinese name, the surname goes first and the given name last: the exact opposite of English. Take “Zhang Wei”: Zhang is the surname, and Wei is the given name. Most surnames are a single character, but some have two, and these are called compound surnames, like Ouyang and Zhuge. In mainland China, women usually keep their own surname when they marry. Most children take their father’s surname, though by law they can take their mother’s instead.
China has a great many surnames. The Hundred Family Surnames, which children once used to learn their characters, lists more than five hundred of them. First on the list is Zhao, because the book was compiled in the Northern Song dynasty, and the emperor at the time was a Zhao. Yet only a handful are actually common. Today the five biggest, Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu and Chen, together make up nearly a third of the country’s population. Liu, meanwhile, comes in at number 252 in the Hundred Family Surnames.
With only a few big surnames, whether you share a name comes down to your given name. A given name is usually one or two characters. In the 1990s, one-character given names were especially popular, and lots of children got a given name of just one character. So many people used characters like wěi “great”, fāng “fragrant” and jìng “quiet” that it’s no wonder there are Zhang Weis and Wang Fangs everywhere. Parents today prefer two-character given names, and they love to pick unusual characters. Among babies born in 2020, the most popular names were Yichen for boys and Yinuo for girls.
In the past, a name could also tell you someone’s generation in the family. Many big clans set down a string of characters in the family genealogy, one for each generation. Everyone of the same generation has that same character in their name, so you can tell at a glance which generation they belong to.
In everyday life, people who know each other don’t always use full names. A young colleague is often called “Xiao Zhang”, little Zhang, while an older one becomes “Lao Zhang”, old Zhang. The “old” here isn’t saying you’re old: it shows warmth and respect.
Foreigners can have Chinese names too. There was an American historian called Fairbank who spent his whole life studying China. The architect Liang Sicheng gave him a Chinese name: Fei Zhengqing. Fei echoes his surname, Zhengqing sounds like his first names, John King, and it also means “upright and pure”.
So if you want a Chinese name too, don’t rush to use it: search it online first. Otherwise you might just become Zhang Wei number 300,000.