Chinese courtesy names

A dialog from the H-Asia list, January 1996

In researching Chinese naming practices, I encountered Y.R. Chao's seminal article ("Chinese Terms of Address", _Language_ 32, 1956: 217-241), in which he makes some fascinating observations about how introductions used to be made using surname + courtesy name + Xiansheng; the person meeting the one introduced would address him by courtesy name + Xiansheng, rather than surname, if he (the gender is Chao's) expects that later he will address is new acquaintance by courtesy name alone; dropping Xiansheng would be easier than abruptly switching from surname + Xiansheng to courtesy name.

My query involves two parts: (1) Do H-ASIA subscribers know of similar strategies being employed in the present? and (2) Given an assumed lack of "courtesy names" in the contemporary PRC, what names would be used for this rather upper-crust situation? Would it be formal, given names, or would something akin to courtesy names be used?

I would be grateful for information about these details, or other experiences in making introductions and deciding exactly which form of address to employ. Please let me know if you would be willing to allow me to quote from your answer in an article I am writing (with acknowledgment, of course).

Susan D. Blum
Department of Anthropology
325 University Museum
33rd and Spruce Streets
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6398

telephone: (215) 573-7671
e-mail: sdblum@sas.upenn.edu

Not quite on the point but perhaps also interesting, I am told that nowadays party members are called {mingzi} + tongzhi mainly when they are being reprimanded.

David Arkush
arkush@uiowa.edu
History Department
319 335-2300
University of Iowa
fax 319 335-2293

During my stay at Beijing University last year, one of the things that struck me was that, compared to my last stay in 1991, many more of my Chinese friends where addressing me by my Chinese personal name (ming2), in stead of by surname (xing4) + personal name. Once, I was even rebutted by an older Chinese gentleman for starting a letter to him with the standard textbook phrase zun1jing4 de Wang2 xian1sheng1 (Dear Mr Wang). He claimed that this was a Western custom, and urged me to address him according to the Chinese custom, which he claimed was : personal name + xiansheng.

Michel Hockx
International Institute for Asian Studies
Leiden, The Netherlands
hockx@rullet.leidenuniv.nl

Nathan Sivin wrote:

> Most of the other usages reported in this thread indicate that, in
> this as so many other ways, all sots of exceptional usages for
> foreigners keep them at a distance from Chinese, and keep Chinese
> thinking of them as abnormal and privileged. I get lots of letters
> from Chinese I have never met that begin "Chin'aide XX
> Jiaoshou." Any Chinese who received such a letter would consider
> it either weird or obnoxiously forward, as a couple of friends
> confirmed when I asked.

If this is true, than the "keeping at a distance" of foreigners must be an institutionalized practice, since, as I mentioned in my previous post, the usage of "zunjing de XX xiansheng (or jiaoshou or whatever)" for polite address, and "qin'ai de XX" for informal address, is explained in Chinese writing textbooks for foreigners (at least in the ones we used in Shenyang in 1986). Fortunately, many Chinese start letters like that as well, and not only when they write to foreigners.

"Qin'ai de XX jiaoshou" is of course hilarious, and no doubt an attempt to translate the English "Dear Prof. XX".

The change I noted last year was that the ming2 was used more and more often in combination with xiansheng, xiaojie and furen. I even noted one occurrence of a person with a monosyllabic ming2 being addressed by another person with ming2 only. This is very rare, but seems to support my observation that a shift is taking place towards increased usage of ming2.

Michel Hockx
International Institute for Asian Studies
Leiden, The Netherlands
hockx@rullet.leidenuniv.nl

In my half a year of working in a Chinese research institute in 1987, just about all the letters I saw began _xing_ + title, e.g. Wang Jiaoshou, Zhu Suozhang. That is also the way people address each other formally, the equivalent of X xiansheng in the old days. When people want to be especially deferential, they speak of the person they are addressing in the third person "Wo keyi ti Wang Jiaoshou gaosu ta ma?," a practice equally widespread in Taiwan when I lived there. For people who have no title, cadres may use _tongzhi,_ but most people get a laugh out of that. Usually people without titles address each other by whole names.

Most of the other usages reported in this thread indicate that, in this as so many other ways, all sorts of exceptional usages for foreigners keep them at a distance from Chinese, and keep Chinese thinking of them as abnormal and privileged. I get lots of letters from Chinese I have never met that begin "Chin'aide XX Jiaoshou." Any Chinese who received such a letter would consider it either weird or obnoxiously forward, as a couple of friends confirmed when I asked.

Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-3325
(nsivin@mail.sas.upenn.edu)

I have been reading Taiwan Wai Ji by Jiang Rixing (a Qin-era work on the family of Zheng Chenggong) in this and other works of the similar era, persons are usually identified by their xing and mingzi the first time they are named, then by their mingzi afterwards.

In Taiwan and other parts of southern China, dialect speakers often address close friends by taking the personal character of the mingzi and prefixing it with an Ah, e.g., He Fu-nan might be called Ah Nan.

Also, in Taiwan, most Hakka women aged 45+ seem to have the character "mei" (girl) in their names. Also, I have met very few Taiwanese Hakka who have only one character in their mingzi. Is this practice also common among Hakka on the Mainland, HK, and in the Nanyang?

Peter J. Herz
613 S. Glenview Dr.
Carbondale, IL 62901
pjherz@midwest.net
Peter Jeffrey Herz
pjherz@midwest.net