Chinese family names

The family is a core value for the life of a Chinese.

For most Chinese, the main social relations are the first family, then colleagues or classmates. In the countryside, the neighborhood relationship is very important also, having friends, but these links are often from the first two. When we talk about family, not the family of two generations of blood, but at least three generations, and all relationships either Germanic or the bond of marriage. The basic social unit is the family, the Chinese are disciplined and taught to sacrifice their personal well-being for the interest of the group. This goes to the point where those who bear the same surname offer sacrifices to their own ancestors.
The family is also a unit of economy: land, assets, furniture, everything belongs to the family but not the individual.

The name in a family takes a much more important than in Western society. This is not what we say often "chinoiserie" unnecessary complication: the system of appellation reflects, first, the Chinese philosophy of family and society and reinforce the other hand , the operation of the perfect order.

The Chinese have adopted a number of specific names and they have added prefixes to indicate the degree of collateral circulation and the degree to ancestry or descent. It is therefore a more accurate system in the West: Where the French say "cousin", the Chinese show exactly how the person is affiliated.

The specific terms vary depending on whether the person is older or younger than that to which it is related within the same generation: the term for brother varies depending on whether it is older or younger. The term for paternal uncle also varies depending on whether it is younger or older than the father, etc..

Specific terms or prefixes vary depending on whether the person has the same surname or not. This distinction is very important because a Chinese man could not marry someone who had the same surname as him. The words that indicate the degree of extraction were also important, because if the marriage was allowed between relatives by women (it was even common among cousins by the mother) was that the two belong to the same generation.

In the first ascending generation, we have two terms and mu fu, father and mother. Then we add a prefix: gu to indicate the father's sister, whether younger or older, bo for the brother of the father older than him and shu for the brother of the father younger than him. We therefore call uncle younger than his father "Shushuai. It is the paternal uncles and aunts.

For the generation of "first degree", the words are more specific:

* Xiong for the elder brother
* Di for brother
Jie zi * or for the older sister
* Mei for the younger sister
* Sao for the wife of elder brother.

In these terms, we add a prefix to indicate the second degree of collateral circulation. For first cousins, it uses the terms brother and sister. The distinction with young or older they are the same generation, but by adding the prefix biao they are the children of the paternal aunt and do not bear the same surname, and the prefix bears the tang same surname.

Thus the kinship terms indicate the relative designated:

* His generation
* Line of collateral
* Age
* Sex
* The sex of the person by whom it is related
* If it is a relationship by blood or marriage
* And an optional if the person is dead or alive

For example, the word "uncle" in Chinese, can be translated by

* Bo: the brother of my father's older than him
* Shu: the father's brother younger than him
* Jiu: the brother of the mother
* Biaoshu the related cousin of the father by his mother and younger than the father
* Biaojiu: the cousin of the mother
* ...

In Chinese, the term "family" and the term "nation" or "heritage" are always linked. A "country" said Guojia, which literally means "home and family." To describe the adverse effect of the war, they say guopo jiawang: the homeland is broken, the family dies. There is also a saying: "Peace family precedes prosperity." Young writers learn to manage the family later, have the capacity to serve the Emperor, to become official, and manage a community.