A Comparative Study on the Origin of Surnames between Chinese and English Culture
Abstract: Culture is the sum of the material wealth and spiritual wealth in the development of human and every nation has its own unique culture. Surnames, created by people’s cultural creation, which are also a special part of culture, have rich cultural connotation and can reflect a nation’s cultural characteristic in history, language, philosophy, ethics, morality, religions, customs, social customs, psychology and value system. A surname is a family name and many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name". In the UK and the US, it is commonly synonymous with "last name", since it is usually placed at the end of a person's given name. But in Chinese culture, the surname is a very important part in one’s life, as saying “A man never changes his name wherever he goes, nor his surname whenever he sits”. In both Chinese and English, there are a great number of diverse and interesting surnames. The article mainly expounds the origin of surnames, comparison of vocabulary of the two kinds of surnames, their similarities and differences between Chinese a
nd English culture and their relationship with given name. Here I need to make the definition of the title. In this article, the “Chinese” means the Han nationality which uses Chinese as their mother tongue in the mainland, other minorities excluded. The “English” means the nations like the UK and the USA where English is used as a mother tongue, the other countries like Australia, New Zealand excluded. This article mainly uses comparative method to distinguish the two kinds of surnames. On the basis of this comparative study, we can reveal the internal cultural characteristics of Chinese and English deeply and thoroughly which is helpful for improving the understanding of and intensify the respect for other cultures. And it also promotes cross-cultural communication and deeply research into language rules.
plum blossomKey words: surname; culture; similarities and differences; cross-cultural communication
. Introduction
Surname is not only a kind of symbols to distinguish one from another or one family from another, but also it is a high-density information symbol indicating the messages of a nation
’s language, history, geography, religion and social development. The communicators between different cultural backgrounds contacted each other initially by the change of surnames. The famous cross-cultural communication experts, Scollon and Scollon said that the surname is the beginning of the cross-cultural communication which is also the window of understanding social culture and evaluation. (cited in Gao and Ren 2003)
In Wangjun’s research (2004:44), she gave an example of the importance of surnames. One American businessman, writer and social observer called Robert. L. Shook(1977) conducted an experiment in which he asked 20 male friends whether they wanted to date with a secretary called Harriett Finkelstein. 18 friends out of 20 said that they did not have time. After one month, he asked them again, but the girl’s name was Jill Conner. 16 of them wanted to date with the girl. Although they did not meet the girl, the first girl lost her chance only by her surname. Because the surname includes aesthetic value and religion value, it gives people the first emotional reaction by primacy effect. For the westerners, this can stir different response. But to the Chinese people, we will regard them as symbols because of diverse culture background.
Because of various history and culture factors, different surname systems are formed by people at all times and in all over the world. The origins of surnames and the cultural meanings are discussed and analyzed in this paper to promote the cross-cultural communication.
II. The origin of Chinese and English surnames
A.The origins of Chinese surnames
1.The background information and reasons of the emergence of Chinese surnames.
Chinese culture is extensive and profound so the Chinese surnames have unique formation and cultural connotation. Chinese people attach great importance to surnames and see them as a symbol of family heritage and family line. We always hear people who have a same surname say that we have the same ancestors, in which we can see the importance of surnames for Chinese people.
The surname in China which began in matriarchal society represents the blood relationship
of a race to distinguish the blood kinship when people got married. Fu Xi, the first of the Three Sovereigns of ancient China, wanted to avoid incest and have a better-birth so he set up the institution that people who had a same surname could not get married. This is a significant symbol of the progress of Chinese nation civilization. With the development of the society, the male dominated main position in the life and labor work. So the clan was man-centric and members of a clan had their surnames according to the male’s surname. (Zhou Deyuan, 1-3)
Referring to Chinese traditional culture, the surnames are of great importance in people’s life and people even pay more attention to surnames than names. Because of the deep influence of Confucianism, people stress three principles and five virtues and the concept of family being supreme, so the surname is prior to name.(Zhou Deyuan, 2-5) In daily communication, if one asks another how to address, actually the one asks the other’s surname. This is totally different from English culture.
2.The origins of Chinese surnames
On the whole, there are 14 origins of Chinese surnames :(Zhou 3-10)
1.In matriarchal society, people have their surnames following their mother. Because the Shennong Clan’s mother called Nudeng, so there are many surnames in Chinese with Chinese character component with the Nu, like Ji, Jiang, etc.
2.Form their surnames by fief. Ancient emperors and the feudal princes always award fiefs to their ministers and nobles so these offsprings would take the name of fief as their surname. For example, a son of King Zhao of Zhou got a fief called Weng and his offspring took Weng as their surname. In all the surnames in China, the surname coming from fiefs is the largest part, reaching more than 200. Nowadays, these surnames break away from their genetic relationship of bloodline.
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