of asian names (1)

recently, have talked quite a bit about names with my mum. and thought i should write something about it here. given the large scope of the topic, i will use 2 posts to capture what i want to share. in this first post, i shall talk about the construct of names, something that i noticed many younger people do not know (and even some in my age group). in the second post, i will reflect on the use of nicknames. 

firstly, the construct of names. there is a long history in this. but these days, as a general guide, a typical asian name, specifically asians of non-malay descent, comprise 3-characters. the first character reflects the person's lineage (surname), the second character reflecting his/ her generational name, and the last character, the person's name itself. take for example, lky's full name is "li guangyao". "li" as in his family name. it reflects his lineage and all his ancestors carry the same character. "guang" is his generational name. every single son in his generation (including my paternal side male cousins) all carry this second character. for that matter, my dad's generation character is "bao", and my dad and all my uncles has this same second character "bao". on the same token, my grandfather's generation character is "ming"... far as i know, old chinese families do make use of certain poems as reference to decide what character to use for their generational character. as for a person's actual name, it is captured in the last character. in my case, "xin"... just one character. to address a person respectfully, he would be referred to by his first character followed by a respectable term eg for lky (our first pm) - li xiansheng ("li" as his family name, "xiansheng"'s closest equivalent is "mister" in english, but in chinese, it means "earlier borned" or "elder"), or if addressing a person with respectable recognition to his generation,  would be called "guangyao", and if it is just him, he can be addressed as "yao", or if a 2-syllabic reference is preferred, then it would be "a-yao"...

interestingly, the first character (the family/ ancestral name)/ surname is the equivalent of the last name in the western context. curiously, i have asked before why this disparity between the western and eastern practices. i do not and still have not found the answer. for asians (including chinese, japanese, korean, etc), my reflection of the practice of placing the family name in front reflected the reverence and deep respect asians accord to their clan and thus takes the front of his/ her name. i have no explanation for why western cultures place it at the end, perhaps, in the western culture, it is always self first, then society? whereas for asians, it is society/ community/ clan above self? i donno. as for the history behind this 3-character concept, i am also not sure. but i suspect its history came from confucian practices that emphasized a whole lot on rituals and orderliness in the family, community and society. whatever the history, there are practical outcomes to this concept of names in the chinese society. for example, if i see another relative with the second character "ming", he would naturally be considered my elder (by generation and not by age) as he would be of the same generation as my granddad. extending this logic, imagine in the old days where members of the "shen" clan live in the same village/ community and where people do not travel so widely, such names would minimize inbreeding within the community thereby preventing genetically diseases from manifesting (something that happened to the ancient egyptians that resulted in the decline of the egyptian dynasties). such practices are gradually lost in modern history. the second character, that reflects the generation, is largely not practiced these days. and a person's name is gradually changed from single-character to dual-character. the outcome of this is still a 3-character name still, but conceptually a whole lot of history in naming protocol has been lost. i attribute this to factors such as lost of a person's roots and westernization of subsequent generations as a result of the huge migration of southern chinese in the 1800s to south east asia, a region that was largely colonized by western countries back then.

i noticed that in recent decades, probably as a result of being influenced by western culture, there is a shift in using and placing surnames at the end of the name (westerners refer to surname as "last name"). to many elders, this is a no-no and very disrespectful. they find it very difficult to place the surname at the end of their name. but we can see a shift in this attitude amongst the younger generations. i had the chance to interact with many japanese and koreans. initially i was rather confused by how they write their names. but in the privacies of their houses, they explained that to them, as a community, due to their long exposure to americans, they are now able to comfortably switch their first and last names without having their own people being confused. take for example hiromi iwasaki. she is very popular singer in the late-70s/80s (& i so adore her songs!). when i mentioned this to my japanese friends, they were quick to exclaim "oh, iwasaki hiromi!..." and they explained that iwasaki is her family name and amongst japanese they place it right in front, whereas hiromi is the name given to her and is thus placed behind (japanese do not have the concept of a generational name far as i am aware)... 

in this regard, we chinese has quite a bit to catch up insofar as accepting and being able to switch this use comfortably. so, for lky, he would be guangyao li... a name that would make anybody's dad's roll in his grave... oh, wait, my dad's was cremated... then again, yup, that reflects the emotional tension over a name construct...

haha!