This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
The meanings of Chinese characters have changed a great deal over the course of history, and some ancient meanings are no longer in common use; when choosing a name, one must pay special attention to this.
The ancients said: giving a child a thousand pieces of gold is not as good as giving the child a good name. Our name accompanies us from birth through school, graduation, work, marriage, children, retirement and death; neither parents nor siblings, spouse nor children accompany us for as many years as our name, and our name stands for ourselves. Before going out shopping, sightseeing, on a date or to work, we all carefully groom our appearance so as to present a fine image quite different from how we are at home, yet we forget only the name that never leaves us. A name has no concrete form, but it can produce psychological suggestion: compare, for example, Liu Furong and Liu Dehua (Andy Lau) — which is better is obvious at once.
For historical reasons, people’s demands on women’s reputation and image are harsher than on men’s: going from good to bad takes only a second, while going from bad to good takes years or even a lifetime. So parents need to be especially careful when naming their daughters. There are four characters that should be used with caution in names.
1. The character 渝 (yú) means “turning from white to black”
The character 渝 is too negative. There is a Taiwanese actress named Qian Boyu (钱柏渝); Miss Qian’s original stage name was Bo Yan’an, and I guess it was the work of some fortune-teller: 柏 “wood flourishing in mǎo, the rabbit; pig and rabbit forming the triple combination.” 柏 (bǎi) is a kind of tree (cypress). 渝 means to go back on, as in 忠贞不渝 (unswervingly loyal) and 生死不渝 (unchanging in life or death). The Shuowen also explains 渝 as “to change and become soiled,” that is, to turn from white to black, by extension to turn from good to bad. 柏渝 can thus be taken to mean wood that is gradually rotting away.
The character 渝 on its own is hard to use. 渝 means turning from white to black — who wants their son to join the criminal underworld (黑社会, literally “black society”)?
2. The character 茵 (yīn) is like a carpet for people to tread on
Some characters have a beautiful surface meaning, but on closer examination and reflection there is a problem.
茵 comes from the idiom 绿草如茵, meaning lush green grass like a “carpet.” 茵 is a “carpet.” In the Five Phases 茵 belongs to wood. Even if your little one’s favourable element is “wood,” when you receive a name from a name-changing master you should think carefully about the deeper meaning of these “names.” Do not give your little one the character 茵; do not let her be trampled on like a “carpet.”
In fact, many masters of the occult arts have only a secondary school education, so parents should do the “gatekeeping” themselves.
3. The character 婥 (chuò) implies women’s illness
婥约 — graceful in bearing. This is a “rare” character. My daughter had a classmate named “婥约.” Once at a parents’ gathering, I talked with 婥约’s father about the amusing business of choosing names, and asked him why he used 婥约 instead of the relatively common 绰约. His answer was that he wanted his daughter’s name to be somewhat special, so he deliberately “looked it up in the dictionary,” and he said the Kangxi Dictionary was authoritative enough and explained 婥约 as “beautiful in appearance.” I told him: 婥约 has a deeper meaning, standing for weakness and sickliness. In some ancient dynasties, female frailty was honoured as “beauty.” (When read as nào in the fourth tone) both the Shuowen Jiezi and the Cihai explain 婥 as “women’s illness.” Would you want your precious daughter to have a “women’s illness”?
Many parents look up the dictionary themselves when naming their babies, but I advise everyone to consult several, and especially to look at works from different dynasties, because the same character has different explanations in different eras.
4. The character 轩 (xuān) needs much care in use
轩 has three meanings.
1) 轩 is an ancient carriage with an awning or curtains, as in 轩驾 (the emperor’s carriage). Taking a “carriage” as a name has a bad connotation — being driven and controlled by others. There is a mixed-race model, Tom Price, whose Chinese name is 白梓轩 (Bai Zixuan), born in Hong Kong. 梓 is a deciduous tree (catalpa), used broadly to mean wood; 梓匠 means an ancient “carpenter.” 梓轩 means “wooden carriage.” I don’t know Mr. Bai’s Eight Characters (birth chart), and I guess he wanted “wood” as his favourable element. Even so, calling oneself a “white wooden carriage” is somewhat problematic
2) 轩 is a long corridor or small room with windows. 轩 carries a feeling of elegance and comfort. If you want to name your restaurant “xx轩,” think three times — unless you don’t want your business to grow big, since 轩 refers to a small room.
3) Nor is 轩 one hundred per cent negative. 轩 is also a luminary of emperors, as in the star Xuanyuan (Regulus). It can be used if well combined, as in 昊轩, which comes from the Song-dynasty Wang Yucheng’s “Memorial Offering Honorific Titles on Behalf of the Chancellors”: “How could one cling to the small virtue of toil and modesty and abandon the great name of establishing the ultimate, occupy the supreme dignity of Xuan and Hao yet long for the solitary path of Chao and You? This is what we your servants cannot understand.
