Classical Cultural Vocabulary

A collection of cultural and political words you may encounter in ancient through not-quite-modern Chinese texts; I’ve nabbed many of them from books for Chinese children meant to acquaint them with concepts that old texts take for granted. I am open to suggestions for expansion (for example, I don’t know very much about Buddhist vocabulary).

Pronunciations are given in Modern Mandarin pinyin.

Pre-Imperial Countries

Squint at some very dense maps on Wikipedia to understand their geographic/temporal relations to each other, but the main thing to understand is that these were separate polities with separate lords and loyalties during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States eras. Some of these names were used by more than one distinct government at different times.

• 蔡 Cài
• 陳(陈) Chén
• 楚 Chǔ
• 韓(韩) Hán (or Hann to distinguish from 漢(汉))
• 晉(晋) Jìn
• 魯(鲁) Lǔ
• 齊(齐) Qí
• 秦 Qín
• 蜀 Shǔ
• 宋 Sòng
• 魏 Wèi (Greater Wei)
• 衞(卫) Wèi but different (Lesser Wei or Wey to distinguish)
• 吳(吴) Wú
• 徐 Xú
• 燕 Yàn
• 越 Yuè
• 趙(赵) Zhào
• 鄭(郑) Zhèng

These are just the ones that come up regularly. There’s way more.

Dynasties

The following list first gives the political name of the dynasty, and then the family name (surname) of the dynasty, as these are not the same. The first few dynasties (Xia, Shang, Zhou) are not strictly imperial but spiritual predecessors of the empire proper. Xia may only be a later projection of political unity on what little is known of the pre-Shang era.

This list is greatly shortened to skip over every Tom, Dick and Li who thought he was emperor (especially since their dynasty names are largely redundant with the kingdoms above). A full list is Wikipedia’s domain. They are in chronological order, but note that’s an approximate concept as they didn’t all rule the same lands and/or some of them popped back up a few times for another go.

• 夏 Xià / 姒 Sì
• 商 Shāng / 子 Zǐ
• 周 Zhōu / 姬 Jī
• 秦 Qín / 嬴 Yíng
• 漢(汉) Hàn / 劉(刘) Liú
• 梁 Liáng / 蕭(萧) Xiāo
• 隋 Suí / 楊 Yáng
• 唐 Táng / 李 Lǐ
• 閩(闽) Mǐn / 王 Wáng
• 遼(辽) Liáo / 耶律 Yelü
• 宋 Sòng / 趙(赵) Zhào
• 金 Jīn (not 晉 Jìn) / 完顏(完颜) Wanyan
• 元 Yuán / 孛兒只斤(孛儿只斤) Borjigin
• 明 Míng / 朱 Zhū
• 清 Qīng / 愛新覺羅(爱新觉罗) Aisin-Gioro

The multi-character family names are extremely approximate phonetic transcriptions of non-Chinese names.

Types of Name

Y’all, emperors had… so many names. So many names.

• 姓 xìng is the surname/family name: what English speakers call the “last name,” but Chinese names are in the reverse order. These are usually one character, rarely two.
• 名 míng is the given name (“first name”), which comes after the family name in Chinese order. In ancient China, you would not normally refer to an adult man by this name; it’s patronizing. Over time there’s been a trend from most being one character to most being two.
• A courtesy name was the personal name conferred in adulthood rites at age 20 (mostly to men but sometimes to married women). Confusingly, it is written 字 zì. Yes, the character for “character.” This is what is meant in dense footnotes that indicate a 名 and a 字. They’re usually one formulaic character plus one free character. Courtesy names fell out of fashion over time.
• And a posthumous name is 謚號(谥号) shìhào. Generally only very politically significant people (such as emperors and empresses) have posthumous names.
• Temple names 廟號(庙号) miàohào are another alternative name also given posthumously.
• Don’t forget regnal names, 尊號(尊号) zūnhào.
• Unfortunately, women are often only recorded by their family name (of their father, not their husband).
• It was considered very rude to use the current emperor’s given name even in its everyday literal sense: this was the 避諱(避讳) bìhuì naming taboo. This could lead to intentionally miswriting the character or making an awkward substitution of homonym or synonym.

Confucianism

• Confucius’s family name was 孔 Kǒng, his given name was 丘 Qiū, and his courtesy name was 仲尼 Zhòngní.
• The native name for Confucianism is 儒 rú, roughly, “scholar of rites”; expanded form 儒家 rújiā. Little distinction is made in Confucian texts between being “Confucian” and being highly educated in general.
• 道 dào (often spelled Tao due to older transcription systems) is literally “way, road, path” and philosophically means The Way to live; different philosophers have different definitions of what this entails.
• 君子 jūnzǐ literally means “the son of a lord” but philosophically means a noble, dignified person of any social class or gender who has advanced far along the Way.
• 仁 rén is that which is profoundly good about human nature, variously translated as humaneness, benevolence and human dignity.