Fw: Chinese generational characters (was: Re: Japanese surnames as mentioned in Mencken's _The American Language_)

["Dylan Sung" <dylanwhs@ukgateway.net>]

Dear Folks,

Generational names came up on sci.lang and Patrick Chew writes a list for his
family below. I thought folks here might be interested.

Roger I Chen had sent me a list a couple of years ago of the two lists he had.
It can be found at

http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/sapienti/tsanggn.htm

and Hakka terms for kinship can be found here

http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/hakga/family.htm

The original message and thread can be found at
http://www.deja.com/group/sci.lang or if you have a news server, news:sci.lang
.

Cheers.
Dyl.

-------------------------------

Patrick Chew  <...>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Date: Thursday, January 11, 2001 6:28 PM
Subject: Chinese generational characters (was: Re: Japanese surnames as
mentioned in Mencken's _The American Language_)


:Dylan Sung wrote:
:> Some families like Zeng/Tsang surname clan have the tradition of
:> taking a character per generation for their lineage, in which the
:> generational character comes from a poem.
:
:
:Dylan -
:
: Thanks for the poem!
: My family (<zhao4> (B5: 趙)) also has a poem:
:
: 若 夫 元 德 允 克 令 德 宜 崇 師 古 希 孟
: 時 學 光 宗 良 友 彥 士 登 汝 必 公 不 惟
: 世 子 與 善 之 從 伯 仲 叔 季 承 嗣 由 同
:
: This is, however, the combination of three lineage poems:
:
:1. 德 惟 從 世 令 子 伯 師 希 與 孟 由 宜 慎
:2. 元 允 宗 仲 士 不 善 汝 崇 必 良 友 季 同
:3. 德 承 克 叔 之 公 彥 夫 時 若 嗣 古 光 登
:
: Unfortunately there're some discrepancies in that there're characters
:in the general poem that aren't in the three lineage lines (學 ， 與 )
:and there's a character in the lineage lines, but not in the general
:poem (慎), and one that's missing from both (順).
:
:> 曾 is mother's maiden name, and her generation is 憲. Her cousin of
:>the same generation has that in his name, so there are plenty of
:>generations still to go before this poem runs out of characters.
:
: Actually, the poem recycles... once you've gone through a full length,
:you start over again.
:
: 每 派 各 立 十 四 字 以 別 源 流 以 序 昭 穆
: 每 世 取 派 中 一 字 又 另 取 選 一 字 配 之 以 為 雙 名
: 次 第 流 傳 週 而 復 始
: 由 是 世 雖 遠 而 情 誼 相 親 人 雖 象 而 昭 穆 不 繫
:
:> Consequently, when using a system like this, across the whole
:> population of those of the same surname, you know immediately how to
:> address someone you've never met before, by calling them brother or
:> uncle, or nephew, etc...
:
: Exactly... when I went to visit the villages, they always asked me what
:character I was in the line-up... often much to the chagrin of those who
:were chronologically older than I...
:
:cheers,
:-Patrick
:
:ps: the Hakka kinship chart you did is excellent!