Ancient Chinese Naming Rules

Most writing on Chinese names starts with characters, tones and five elements. But two and a half thousand years ago, naming was first of all a matter of ritual: who was allowed to name a child, when it happened, which words were forbidden, and how a person's name related to the courtesy name he or she would receive as an adult. The rules are scattered through two books — the Zuo Zhuan (左传), a commentary on the Spring and Autumn annals, and the Book of Rites (礼记).

This page gathers them in order, quoting the original where it matters, and ends with a section on the "ancient rules" that are not ancient at all. Separating the two is more useful than memorising another list of lucky characters.

1. Four words that are not synonyms

In pre-imperial China, xing (姓) and shi (氏) were different things. Xing governed marriage: people of the same xing did not marry, because a shared xing implied a shared ancestor. Shi marked status: noble families took a shi from a fief, an office, or an ancestor's name, while commoners often had none. So a man was known by his shi, not his xing — the ruler of Lu was "the Marquis of Lu", not "Ji Someone". Women were the ones identified by xing. Only after the Qin and Han dynasties did the two merge into the single surname concept used today.

The split between ming (名, given name) and zi (字, courtesy name) was stricter still. The given name was used by elders and by rulers addressing a subordinate, and by the person speaking of himself. The courtesy name was for peers. This is why a boy received his zi at the capping ceremony at twenty: once he was an adult, an equal who used his given name was being rude. The modern Chinese word for "name", mingzi, is literally these two things joined together.

A fourth term, shi (谥, posthumous name), was added after death: a title summarising a life, assigned by successors and used ever after in histories and sacrifices.

2. The five ways of naming

The earliest systematic account of how to choose a name comes from the Zuo Zhuan, Duke Huan of Lu, year 6. Duke Huan had a son and asked his minister Shen Xu about naming. The answer lists five grounds:

There are five ways of naming: by evidence, by aspiration, by resemblance, by borrowing, and by affinity. Naming from what is born is evidence; naming from virtue is aspiration; naming from a likeness is resemblance; taking from an object is borrowing; taking from the father is affinity.

The third-century commentator Du Yu supplied examples for each, and they are worth knowing because they show how loose the "rule" really was:

Four of these five are about a fact, not a preference. The name records something that happened. That is the opposite of the modern habit of scrolling a character list for something that sounds nice and inventing a justification afterwards.

Note what is absent: no five elements, no stroke counts, no zodiac animals. Those came much later, as section 9 explains.

3. The six prohibitions, and the reason behind them

In the same passage, Shen Xu adds six things a name must not be:

Not after a state, not after an office, not after a mountain or river, not after a hidden ailment, not after a domestic animal, not after a ritual vessel or jade. The Zhou served the spirits through naming taboo, and a name will in the end be avoided. Therefore a state name would lose its name, an office would lose its post, a mountain would lose its cult, an ailment would lose its word, an animal would lose its sacrifice, a vessel would lose its rite.

The key phrase is "a name will in the end be avoided". Under the taboo system, no subject or descendant could write or speak a superior's name. So if a ruler were named "Minister of Education", the entire country would have to stop using that phrase — and the office itself would have to be renamed or abolished. This is not a question of luck. It is a question of administrative cost.

The Zuo Zhuan immediately gives three real consequences: the state of Jin abolished the office of situ (minister) because its Marquis Xi was named Situ; Song abolished the office of sikong (works) because Duke Wu was named Sikong; and Lu stopped using the names of two mountains because its Dukes Xian and Wu were named Ju and Ao. Losing a whole branch of government to keep a child's name pretty was considered a bad trade.

A slightly different list appears in the Book of Rites, which gives only three bans — no state, no sun or moon, no hidden ailment — and replaces the rest with "not after the sun and moon". The two texts disagree. That disagreement is itself informative: these were conventions observed with variation across states, not a single statute. Modern summaries that present one tidy list usually smooth over this.

Translated into modern terms, the six bans reduce to one principle: do not use a word whose becoming your child's name would inconvenience everyone around them. The principle still holds; only the form of the inconvenience has changed.

4. Naming at three months

Naming was a ceremony, not an announcement. The Book of Rites, chapter on the household, describes it: at the end of the third month the child was bathed, hair cut, presented at the ancestral shrine, and then the mother carried the child out and stood facing east beneath the door lintel, while the father took the child's right hand and named him.

The father holds the child's right hand, coughs, and names him.

Three months, because infant mortality was high enough that a name was only worth recording once the child was likely to survive. Afterwards a scribe recorded the name and it was reported to the clan and to the state. The name entered the registers at that moment.

Later folk practice moved the timing — full month, hundredth day, first birthday — but kept the structure: the name is declared publicly, in front of witnesses, and only then is it real.

5. Childhood name, capping name, seniority title, posthumous name

The Book of Rites, chapter on Tan Gong, compresses a whole life of naming into one line:

Name in childhood, courtesy name at capping, seniority title at fifty, posthumous name at death — this was the way of Zhou.

The third stage is the one usually forgotten: after fifty, a man was no longer addressed by his courtesy name but by his rank among brothers — Bo, Zhong, Shu, Ji (first, second, third, fourth). Respect for age outranked the courtesy name. These ordinal characters then entered names and courtesy names permanently: Bo Qin, Zhong Ni (Confucius, the second son), Shu Xiang, Ji Zha.

The capping ceremony itself was a change of social status, not just a change of label. The Book of Rites says that after capping the young man is given a courtesy name, and that this is "the way of becoming an adult" — from that day he bears responsibility, and others must treat him as an adult.

6. How courtesy names echo given names

A courtesy name was not arbitrary. The Family Instructions of the Yan Clan puts it as "the name rectifies the body, the courtesy name displays the virtue". Four relationships recur:

Courtesy names frequently carry zi (a honorific), an ordinal (Bo, Zhong, Shu, Ji), or fu (a male style). The pairing convention survives usefully today even without formal courtesy names: a household can keep a formal school name and an intimate childhood name, one grave and one warm, as two faces of the same hope.

7. Naming taboo

You cannot understand the six prohibitions without understanding taboo. The Book of Rites states the social rule with a memorable formula:

On entering a border, ask what is forbidden; on entering a state, ask its customs; on entering a household, ask what names it avoids.

The same text offers two moderations: a taboo does not extend to near-homophones, and a two-character name does not require avoiding each character separately. The fact that these clarifications were needed shows the pressure the system created.

By the Tang dynasty the pressure had become career-threatening. Han Yu wrote an essay defending the poet Li He, whose father's name was Jin — a near-homophone of jin, "to advance" — and who was therefore barred from sitting the metropolitan examination by people invoking taboo. Han Yu argued from the "near-homophones are exempt" rule and lost the practical argument: Li He never sat the exam.

No legal taboo system exists today, but the family custom of not reusing an elder's character survives, especially in large clans. Its nature has changed: it is no longer an obligation to the state, but an expression of respect within a family.

8. From single-character to double-character names

Pre-Qin and Han names were overwhelmingly single-character: Kong Li, Qu Yuan, Xiang Yu, Liu Bang, Han Xin. The Eastern Han and Three Kingdoms period is the extreme case — Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Sun Quan, Zhuge Liang, Zhou Yu, almost without exception.

The Book of Han, in its chapter on the Xiongnu, records that Wang Mang "ordered that China should not have two-character names". How far that decree actually shaped the fashion is debated, but the broad pattern — single-character names regarded as more proper, double names as slightly vulgar — is solid.

Double names became common from the Wei and Jin onward and dominant by the Tang and Song. Alongside them came the generational name: every member of the same generation in a clan shares one character, usually the middle one, fixed by a generational poem that is extended when it runs out. The Kong clan received its generational characters from the Ming court and has extended them since; the Ming imperial house had twenty characters assigned to each princely branch, and the emperors' names follow the sequence exactly.

The effect is that a name encodes a coordinate: generation and branch, legible to any clan member at once. This is why, in traditional naming, the generational character outranks considerations of meaning or sound — it is a constraint, not an option.

9. Four "ancient rules" that are not ancient

Popular writing on Chinese naming often folds later systems into the classical tradition. Four need separating:

This is not an argument against using them. As cultural preferences or as entertainment they have their place. The point is that calling them "ancient Chinese naming rules" compresses two thousand years of very different practices into one thing — and that confusion makes it harder to decide which layer you actually want to work in.

For the element-based approach in detail, see Elements and BaZi; for the grid method's history, see Three Talents and Five Grids.

10. What still holds

Decide the reason before the character. The five ways all point the same direction: a name should record something. A circumstance, a hope, a place, a book you actually read. Choose the reason first, then find the character that carries it. Doing it in the opposite order produces names that are pretty and inexplicable — which is exactly what the Zuo Zhuan passage was trying to prevent.

Adapt the six bans, don't copy them. The modern equivalents: avoid large place names and provinces, avoid job titles, avoid common objects and brand names, avoid characters tied to illness or disability, avoid livestock characters, and avoid characters so rare they need explaining every time. The first five preserve the classical concern with other people's inconvenience. The last one is a new problem: rare characters fail at registration counters, booking systems and school records.

Keep the formal and the intimate separate. The ming/zi split existed because a person needs two registers: one for the lineage register and official documents, one for family and friends. A school name that is steady and correct, a childhood name that is warm and easy — they need not share a character, but they should not contradict each other.

One caveat. All of the above is institutional history, not a set of obligations. The ritual worked because it served a particular social structure; household registration, language environment and family forms have all changed. What is worth keeping is the reasoning underneath: a name should have a source, a sense of proportion, and some thought for the people who will have to say it.

Frequently asked

What are the five ways of naming in the Zuo Zhuan?

Naming by evidence (a verifiable circumstance at birth), by aspiration (a virtue the parents hope for), by resemblance (a physical likeness), by borrowing (an object at hand), and by affinity (a trait shared with the father). One of the five justifies the name; the character itself can come from anywhere.

What are the six prohibitions on Chinese names?

Do not name a child after a state, an office, a mountain or river, a hidden ailment, a domestic animal, or a ritual vessel or jade. The reason was cost rather than superstition: names eventually had to be avoided in speech and writing, so a name duplicating an office or a sacred mountain would force that office or cult to be renamed or abolished.

At what age did children receive a name and a courtesy name?

The father named the child at the end of the third month, holding the child's right hand. A boy received his courtesy name at the capping ceremony at twenty; a girl received hers at the hairpin ceremony when betrothed. The Tan Gong chapter summarises: childhood name, capping name, seniority title at fifty, posthumous name after death.

Were five elements and five grids part of ancient Chinese naming?

No. The classical ritual texts contain no five-element remedy for a birth chart; that system took shape from the Tang and Song onward. The five-grid method was compiled in Japan in the early twentieth century and arrived in China around 1929. Neither has a lineage in the Zuo Zhuan or the Book of Rites.

Further reading: How Chinese names work (structure, tones, generational characters), names from classical poetry (characters with a traceable source), and the Chinese-language original of this page, which quotes the classical texts in full.

Note: Classical quotations follow standard modern editions; interpretations draw on Du Yu's and Kong Yingda's commentaries. This page is cultural and historical explanation, not naming or ritual advice.