Mainland Chinese Names:
Meaning, Gender, and Modern History

by Monica Lin, Brian Ma, Jeffrey Luo, Yu-Ying Lee

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What's in a (Chinese) Name?

In English, names are used as identifiers. They can have some convoluted meanings attached to them (e.g., "Isabella" is the Spanish/Italian translation of "God is my oath"), but for the most part, they simply serve as identifiers.

In Chinese, names are more than that. Not only are they personal identifiers, but each name also means something that every Chinese person is aware of because in Chinese, names are made up of words/characters.

An example of a Chinese name is: 马绍恩. The structure is [Family Name (马)] [Given Name (绍恩)]. The family name is inherited from the patriarch of a family, passed down through generations. It usually consists of a single character, but a few consist of two.

The given name is chosen at birth as an individual’s personal identifier. It can consist of one or two characters. Usually, if a name has two characters, the second is the "generation name", which siblings of a family share, (绍 in the example above). If a person's given name is only a single character, it may indicate that they are an only child, but parents might still give their only child a two-character name if they prefer the meaning of it.

In the example name above, "马" means "horse", "绍" means "to continue/carry on", and "恩" means "grace/kindness"; (these are family name, first character of given name, and second character of given name respectively.) This specific name was intended to have Christian undertones, as the parents had just converted to Christianity when their baby was born.

Because Chinese names have such meanings, naming requires great care. Parents tend to want to give names with pleasant meanings, eliminating vulgar and negative words from the naming vocabulary. Some parents even wish to bestow a “good” name because Chinese superstition suggests that a name can determine one’s fate in life. As such, names encode the wishes parents have for their children. So, what are these wishes? To uncover more about this relationship, we created the data visualizations below. We discovered that names and their associated sentiments change depending on the gender of a newborn and the historical period in which they were born.

This article showcases an overview of general trends in Chinese naming practices, but by no means does it represent the general experience of the Chinese people. When giving names to their newborn children, parents have an infinite amount of combinations to choose from. When settling on that final name, they have most likely selected something that embodies their unique and individual experiences and, as a result, future hopes for their child. It is important to keep in mind, then, that the history and meanings shared below were experienced differently by each and every parent.

Important Notes

Before we dive into exploring Chinese names throughout modern history, we must share a few important notes about our work. The data represents only Han Chinese names from the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China). The names are split into 6 cohorts: pre-1960, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The pre-1960 names are of those who were alive at the time, and after that, they are of all newborns in a given decade. The data contains unique aspects of Mainland China’s historical context, events, and culture, but naming practices in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, the Chinese Diaspora, and non-Han ethnic groups in Mainland China are not reflected.

Additionally, we did some work to make the data more accessible. First, we translated 500+ individual names by hand and catagorized them into themes. Then, to verify validity, two members of our team cross-checked one another's translations and categorization. Though every Chinese character is very rich in meaning and nuance, we did our very best to convey them in English. We hope that the translations will be insightful and interesting to you!

The Impact of Modern History on Chinese Names

The characters of Chinese names were impacted by the historical contexts during which they were given, and our first visualizations take a deeper look at this relationship between history and given names.

First, we present a breakdown of historical periods in China from pre-1960s to the 2000s, and break down the most important takeways of our main visualization for this section.

Then, we present that visualization with an accompanying caption describing how to read and interact with it. (If you would like to see that visualization now, please click here. You can always scroll up to read through the history after.)

— Before 1960

The years before the 1960s were characterized by revolution, poverty, and instability.

If you were born during this period, you would have experienced the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the fall of China's last imperial dynasty in 1911, the internal division and constant civil war of the Warlord Era from 1912 to 1927, a partial unification by Nationalists in 1927, the creation of puppet states in the northwest by Japan in 1931, and a brutal, full-scale invasian by Japan that marked the start of World War II for China in 1937. After World War II ended, you would have experienced the eruption of a civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, which saw the Communists win on the Mainland, pushing the Nationalists to retreat to Taiwan. You would have also witnessed Mao Zedong (毛泽东) proclaim the People's Republic in Tiananmen Square, bringing about the end of a civil war but a more tumultuous future. Under Mao, you would have experienced a series of collectivizing reforms, but some, like the Great Leap Forward in 1958, led to a famine that ultimately killed an estimated 15 to 55 million people from 1959 to 1961.

To say the people of China suffered greatly during this period would be an understatement. In addition to the death and suffering caused by civil wars and external invasion, China experienced 6 separate famines from 1900-1960.

The zeitgest of this era was very much a desire to see a better China as the one that parents knew was desolate and riddled with hardship. As such, parents named their children in the hope that they would grow up in and help build a more peaceful, stable, and prosperous China.

Top 100 Male & Female Names Related to Nation/National Recovery

Top 100 Male names are shown on the left, and top 100 female names on the right.

At the time, female children were less expected to be concerned with affairs of the state, hence, it was much less common for female names to be about the nation and nation-building. This pattern reflects the gender attitudes of the period.

— The 1960s and 1970s

In 1961, the Great Chinese Famine ended, and Mao's leadership took a backseat due to the failure of the Great Leap Forward. Political leaders Liu Shaoqi (刘少奇), Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), and Premier Zhou Enlai (周恩来) laid a heavier hand in directing the country, adopting more pragmatic and open economic policies.

Dissatisfied, Mao attempted to regain his preeminence by launching the Cultural Revolution in 1966. This mass social movement aimed to reinstate Communism/Maoism as the dominant ideology. A key idea of this movement was that the chaos and suffering of previous decades could be attributed to the flaws and weaknesses of "tradition"; To strengthen the nation, the country must cast away the past, often violently, and aggressively modernize into a Communist state.

As a result, names related to Communism, such those including the color red and those related to military terminology, became rather popular during this era.

In the mid-1970s, Deng Xiaopeng brought about some limited economic reforms, but the Cultural Revolution continued until the death of Mao in 1976. Afterwards came an official repudiation of the Cultural Revolution and its ideals, as well as a reduction of ideological fervor among the individuals of Mainland China.

Top 100 Male & Female Names Related to the Cultural Revolution (Military & Red)

During the 1960s and 1970s, names related to military terminology became especially popular for male newborns. In fact, many made top rankings.

For female newborns, military names were not at all popular, reflecting the gender attitudes of the time as military matters were seen as masculine. There was an increase in popularity, though, for names containing the word, "red." (Red is a color closely associated with Communism, and the main color of the flag that was raised when the People's Republic of China was established.)

— The 1980s

In China, the 1980s was a decade of reform. The collectivizing policies instituted in previous decades were dismantled between 1979 and 1982. In 1985, private enterprises were allowed to form.

The "One Child Policy" was just introduced in 1979, and its effects were most pertinent in this decade and the decades after. As mentioned in the introduction, in Chinese names with three characters, the second is the "generation name", with siblings of the same generation sharing that same second character. The new policy meant that parents could only have a single child, so many parents chose not to give a generation name, resulting in the rise of single-character names.

Top 100 Male & Female Single-Character Names

For both male (left) and female (right) names, single-character names became a greater proportion of the top 100 names of each decade from the 1980s onwards.

— The 1990s to the 2000s

Deng's economic reforms during the 1980s were fruitful, resulting in massive economic growth, stabilitym and prosperity for the people of Mainland China. As such, parents of this era were no longer as concerned with ideology and national stability; rather, they focused more on their child's well-being and future. This resulted in more names relating to "Intelligence", "Joy & Happiness", and "Family". A gradual improvement in gender attitudes can also be observed, as named relating to "Intelligence" saw a large increase for both genders.

Top 100 Male & Female Names Related to Intelligence, Joy & Happiness, and Family

For both male (left) and female (right) names, names related to "Intelligence", "Joy & Happiness", and "Family" saw a rise in popularity, especially "Intelligence".

Putting It All Together

Now that you've learned a condensed version of China's modern history and its impact on naming, you can explore our main visualization below.

The popularity of each name per decade is encoded vertically, i.e. the name at the very top was the most popular of that decade. A line connects a name between decades, revealing the change in its popularity through time. Each name is labelled according to its peak ranking.

Hover your mouse over the labels and lines to see a name's meaning on the right. Finally, the colors represent the "theme" of the name. Filter the themes by clicking on the colored squares on the right. Multiple themes can be selected at once, and you can deselect a theme by clicking on it again. As you explore the different themes, we implore you to consider how historical events or gender biases may have impacted trends for popular names.

Finally, if you'd like to take a tour through our explanation of China's modern history again, please click here.

Top 100 Male Names Throughout Modern History
Top 100 Female Names Throughout Modern History

Condensing Historical Trends & Prevalence Through the Decades

As you've seen above, Chinese names have really changed since before the 1960s, reflecting the zeitgest and gender attitudes of the times people have lived through.

Below is a visualization depicting what 50 most popular names from before 1960s are still among the 50 most popular in the 2000s. You can see that hardly any names continue to make through to the top 50 in the 2000s.

The Prevalence of the Top 50 Names from the 1950s for Males & Females Throughout the Decades
Decade Selected:

Interact with the slider above to see which of the top 50 names from the 1950s make it to each of the following decades.

Each tile represents one of the most popular 50 names from the 1950s. In each tile, the blue area represents the proportion of male newborns have that given name, and the pink area represents the proportion of female newbowns have that given name. As you increase the decade value of the slider, you will see that some tiles fade to grey; this means that that name is no longer part of the top 50 most popular names of that given/selected decade.

Note: The position of the tiles do not encode frequency.

Warmth & Competence and Gender Attitudes

We have now seen that names can reveal information about the historical events parents have experienced, but what else can we learn from names? Well, because Chinese names are composed of real words, they can also teach us about the emotions they are meant to evoke. Our data source helps us with this, as it gives functions to calculate three attributes/values that quantify certain feelings each character may evoke: valence, warmth, and competence. In the following visualization, we focus on the warmth and competence.

First, what are “warmth” and “competence”? According to a research paper titled, “Name Norms: A Guide to Casting Your Next Experiment”, when meeting others for the first time, people’s impressions are affected by two aspects: warmth and competence. Warmth can be characterized by traits such as friendliness, honesty, kindness, sincerity, reliability, and morality. Competence can be characterized by traits such as cleverness, carefulness, efficiency, creativity, knowledgeability, persistence, and intelligence.

How, then, were these traits quantified and given values? The creators of the data source asked 10 Chinese people (5 female) to rate Chinese names. They were given names of people, instructed to imagine meeting them, and then asked to judge how likely they perceived this person as either warm or competent on a scale from 1 (strongly unlikely) to 5 (strongly likely). These raters utilized their pre-existing knowledge of the characters' connotations and their own intuition. As such, It is important to note that these ratings are quite subjective.

Nonetheless, the following visualization explores what characters were most popular from the 1950s to the 2000s in female and male given names in relation to warmth and competence. Are there any relationships between names, gender, and warmth/competence? It turns out that regardless of gender, the top 50 characters of each decade display above-average warmth and competence. This may be because of names acting as manifestations of future hopes; as such, a parent would never want to give any child a name that is vulgar.

Though average warmth of given characters among male and female newborns stayed relatively similar throughout the decades, on average, characters given to males for their names scored higher on competence. The gap increases for average competence between male and female names in the 1990s and 2000s, displaying some biases towards gender, i.e. that parents had higher hopes for the competence of male children.

Between the 1950s to 1980s, top female characters were generally related to beauty, red, and flora, as we saw in our discussion above. Though these characters have high warmth values, in the 1990s and 2000s, the average competence values of female characters increased. We see more characters such as 敏 (min3 | warmth: 3.7; competence: 3.9; translation: fast; quick; clever; smart | 11th in 1990s), 欣 (xin1 | warmth: 3.5 | competence: 3.4 | translation: happy; joyous; delighted | 3rd in 2000s), and 慧 (hui4 | warmth: 4 | competence: 4.2 | translation: bright; intelligent | 7th in 2000s). This change can be explained by the more positive feelings of the 1990s and 2000s, also discussed above, as this era saw an increase of popular names relating to "Joy & Happiness", "Family", and "Intelligence".

Such increase in competence values is also seen with male characters during the same time. In the 1950s and 1970s, top male characters covered a wide range of themes including “Nation” and “Wealth”. In the 1990s and 2000s, there is an increase of characters with both higher warmth and competence, such as 杰 (jie2 | warmth: 3.9 | competence: 4.3 | translation: hero; heroic; outstanding | 7th in 1990s), 泽 (ze2 | warmth: 3.8 | competence: 3.9 | translation: grace; brilliance | 17th in 2000s), and 嘉 (jia1 | warmth: 4.3 | competence: 3.8 | translation: excellent; joyful; auspicious | 18th in 2000s).

Though both genders’ characters have above-average warmth and competence, certain characters only appear in either female or male names because Chinese words are often characterized as more feminine (e.g., flower-related words) or masculine (e.g., military-related words.) Words in Latin-based languages (Spanish, French, etc.), have genders, too.

Finally, we were curious about whether names that were less popular really had lower warmth/competence. To explore this, we handpicked 12 characters that match this requirement and are among the top 50 most popular characters of any decade. Toggle the checkbox below to explore their meanings and ratings!

Warmth & Competence

The left visualization separates male and female newborn names, while the right visualization showcases both at once.

Select Number of Characters:
Select Decade:
Select Gender (Left Chart):


The average lines in each decade are calculated for all 50 characters in that decade, regardless of how many you decide to display in the visualizations.

Look up the history of a character in your own name!

Now that you've learned a decent amount of information regarding Chinese names, we want to give you a chance to individually track a character/name you might be interested in throughout history. You can enter in a character in your own name or a name you know, but we've also provided some celebrity names below that you can copy-and-paste if you are not familiar with Chinese. Please remember to copy and paste a single character only!

The initial input of the visualization is the character, 英 (ying1), which means "petal/flower/leaf/brave/hero." This name has exponentially decreased in parts per million since the 1960s. (Parts per million is just the normalized value/absolute number of how many people have the character in their name; you can think of it as similar to popularity, but not the exact same.)

Copy-and-paste the character from a name of a famous Chinese person below, or enter in a character you know!

OR

In the end, a name is not just a name.

A person’s Chinese name can reveal a lot of information about what their parents experienced as their nation navigated through history. As such, a name is not simply a name. Rather, it is a culmination of not only a nation's history, but also one's familial history composed of experiences spanning hundreds of years and generations,

...but for something that spans populations and eras, it is also something small in scale, something deeply personal, individual, and unique to someone's lived experience. It is someone's life, someone's values, someone's hopes and aspirations, all bestowed upon someone they have newly brought into the world, and whom they love dearly. This is a Chinese name.

Write-Up

Introduction
  Our group consists of 4 members who all have Han Chinese heritage, so looking through the dataset, we understood the definitions of isolated characters and wondered why our parents named us the way they did. More generally, we wondered: “What influences a Chinese name?”
  One obvious answer was gender, a deciding factor in most cultures. Other potential influences included history and parents’ wishes for their children, i.e. naming a child a word meaning “smart” might mean that they wanted their child to grow up smarter.
  We realized that Chinese names are rich with meaning and information, so we were eager to learn more about the people of Mainland China, the times they lived through, and their hopes for the future, all through the names they gave their children.

Related Work
We found found an article, “What can we tell from the evolution of Han Chinese names?”, that gave us an initial understanding of modern history in China and Han Chinese Names.
  Finally, we also learned more about modern Chinese history from this source by the University of Washington.

Methodology
  The dataset consists of Chinese surnames and given names separated into 6 time periods: pre-1960s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. It contains nationwide frequency statistics of 1,806 Chinese surnames and 2,614 Chinese characters used in given names, covering about 1.2 billion Han Chinese people. We focus on given names, specifically, the top 100 given names per decade (first visualization) and the top 50 most popular characters in any given name decade (all other visualizations). This data source also has information on qualities of Chinese names, such as warmth and competence, which we used in our third visualization.
  The data was already cleaned, but we wanted to find English translations for characters and discovered an API. Since Chinese names have more nuance and meaning than the API could provide, for the top 100 given names per decade used in our first visualization, Brian and Yu-Ying, who are native Mandarin speakers, translated 500+ characters by hand and categorized them by theme.
  We utilized prior knowledge of JS to upload data, and we coded the visualizations ourselves, taking inspiration from our motivations and class lectures, but not existing algorithms.

Design
  For our first visualization, we encoded decade as horizontal positioning and the ranking of the given name as vertical positioning, giving the viewer a lot of information effectively. Because the chart is complex, encoding themes of meanings as color can help the user see more general trends, which is vital to connecting it with historical context. Hovering over each name shows the user its meaning; including each meaning in the main visualization itself would have been far too overwhelming. We originally did not have a way to filter the themes and did not break down the visualization/highlight important takeaways, but these new features made the visualization more understandable, digestible, and interactive.
  For our second visualization, we encoded the gender proportion of the name as color and space.
  For our third visualization, we again encoded gender as color and used dots to encode both the average warmth and competence values of each character at once. Including a line of the averages of both metrics offers a baseline for comparison. Offering more information on hover helps uncrowd the visualization, and giving the user customizability of all inputs encourages exploration.
  For our final visualization, we highlighted important time periods and labelled them, making it easy for users to see what periods may have affected the name they selected. The visualization is interactive, giving users two different methods for searching up characters in order to cater to both non-Chinese speakers as well.

Implementation
  As mentioned above, we used an API we found online and hand-translations by team members to translate the Chinese characters in the dataset to appropriate English definitions. We coded a parser in Python to automate the translation process and made a JSON mapping of translations.
  For loading data, we used JavaScript; this is in the beginning of our “script.js” file. Specifically, we have JavaScript “Promises” that fetches from some URLs stored in GitHub pages. Click here for an example.
  Finally, for the visualizations, we originally built them in an Observable Notebook using D3, but we switched over to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (Vanilla JS) as we preferred the aesthetics of our own website. All code is our own, and there are no performance issues that we are aware of.

Discussion
  We believe that our final design is quite successful! Many students came up to us during and after class to compliment our work, especially Chinese and Chinese Americans who relate to the contents of our work. In the end, we created visualizations that answered our initial questions, satisfied our motivations, and interwove Chinese names with the influences of modern Chinese history.
  We believe there is little-to-no confusion for our final visualizations. We received feedback from previous class sessions that we implemented to curb confusion, i.e. our first visualization was originally condensed/hard-to-follow, but we expanded it and added features to make it easier to read. Some viewers were also initially confused by our second visualization and its main takeaway, but with accompanying captions/text, we hope that this provided more clarity.
  Finally, we gleaned insight into the impact of history on the identity and experience of Chinese people. Though we have each heard much about the Cultural Revolution as an event, these visualizations have helped us personalize and individualize historical experiences. Moreover, we learned about the prevalences of our own names, and we believe that other Chinese viewers will feel the same way. For our wider audience, we give an overview of Chinese history, which is often overlooked in American schools. Hopefully, our work piqued their interest in cultures vastly different from theirs.

Future Work
  Regarding research, in addition to the general events, we want to research gender history and social history more in-depth.
  For our second visualization, we want to create an accompanying visualization that shows the top 50 characters per decade based on which decade was selected, rather than only tracking the survivability of pre-1960s names.
  For our last visualization, we want to allow the user to input multiple characters and compare trends of all those selected side-by-side. We also want to make the celebrity names clickable and include more history regarding each celebrity’s name.
  Finally, we would like to conduct more user tests with people not in our class to get opinions from those who may not be as familiar with our work. (Monica was only able to test with one person outside of class.)


Acknowledgements & References

Thank you for reading!
— ✨ Brian 马绍恩, Yu-Ying 李昱瑩,
Jeffrey 骆花雷, & Monica 林子惠 🥳 🧧 🐼
Credits

Page Layout & Design: Monica
Page Data Loading & Python Parser: Jeffrey
Translation & Catagorisation: Brian & Yu-Ying
Introduction and Historical Write-Up: Brian & Monica
Editing, Proofreading, (Brief) User Testing, & Final Write-Up: Monica
Visualization #1: Top 100 Name Ranking & Themes: Brian
Visualization #2: Condensing Historical Trends: Jeffrey
Visualization #3: Warmth & Competence and Gender Attitudes: Yu-Ying
Visualization #4: Modern History of Your Name: Yu-Ying