Here I will give you the characters for 20 of the more common Chinese family names.
But first, some general info:
姓
xing4
TO BE SURNAMED. The etymology of this character is a bit confusing. It consists of 女(nü3, woman) and 生 (sheng1, be born), so although surnames take the patrilinear line, it came to mean “be surnamed”. But [...]
Archive for July 12th, 2008
Character 71-100 : Surnames
Posted in Hanzi, tagged history, surnames on July 12, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Characters 51-70
Posted in Hanzi on July 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I am grateful for the nice comments and encouragement I have received. Please tell me whether this blog lives up to your expectations!
We will continue with a few simple (well, easier said than done) but crucial characters.
手
shou3
HAND. Doesn’t have enough fingers to provide a good mnemonic…so you might want to think of it as a [...]
Namesake
Posted in China: Sunny Side Up, tagged internet, politics on July 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This morning, I received an email from a former student of mine (now at the university) who’d been struggling for three weeks to get his academic website online after it had been blocked. He succeeded and wrote in to tell me what had been the reason for the inexplicable inaccessibility: Apparently, one of the papers [...]
