given names

[Chao Li]

Dear Giorgio,

What I meant was that, *to me*, it is not the case that "*many* names [in
Chinese] are gender-neutral". To me, just *some* names are gender-neutral.
But I certainly agree with you that spoken form involves more ambiguity and
makes it harder to tell whether a name is male name or female name.

Best,
Chao







On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 6:08 PM, <giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it> wrote:

>
> Dear Chao,
>
> I never wrote (or thought) that most Chinese names are gender-neutral, I
> just wrote that you can find many examples of gender-neutral names, more
> than English at any rate; I think I wrote quite clearly that the meaning of
> morphemes of the name itself help you understand whether it is a male or a
> female name. If a name as 杰 jié (or 捷 jié) is typically associated with a
> man but you also use it for a woman, then to me it is gender-neutral; you
> do not use 'Mark' for a girl, or 'Ann' for a boy in English.
> Since you mentioned the distinction between written and spoken form, I may
> add that in the spoken form there can be even more ambiguity: if a person's
> given name is 'lì', for instance, you can associate it to
> characters/morphemes as 力 'strength' and 丽 'beauty', which evoke quite
> different images.
>
> Best,
>
> Giorgio
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
> Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
> Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione
> Edificio U6 - stanza 4101
> Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1
> 20126 Milano
>
> Tel.: (+39) 02 6448 4946
> Fax: (+39) 02 6448 4863
> E-mail: giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it
>
>
> On Sun, 22 Jul 2012 16:17:25 -0400
>  Chao Li <chao.li at AYA.YALE.EDU> wrote:
>
>> Dear Giorgio,
>>
>> I personally do not think Chinese truly fits with what Prof. Newmeyer
>> described in his request because *most* names in Chinese are not
>>
>> gender-neutral. I believe this is true not only in written form but also
>> in
>> spoken form. In the case of "杰"，it is typically used in male given names
>> though one can sometimes encounter it in female given names.
>>
>> Best,
>> Chao
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 1:27 PM, <> wrote:
>>
>>  Dear colleague,
>>>
>>> In Chinese (and Sinitic in general) many names are gender-neutral, but
>>> not
>>> all of them. For instance, 杰 jié ('outstanding') is a very common name
>>> used
>>> both for boys and girls; very often the only clue to the gender of the
>>> name-bearer is the usage of certain characters/morphemes, the meaning of
>>> which is associated with feminine or masculine 'images', let us say.
>>> Note that Chinese does not mark gender on adjectives and nouns; I suspect
>>> that there might be a connection between this characteristic and having
>>> gender-neutral names (see the jié example above).
>>>
>>> Please let me know if you should need more data on that. Best,
>>>
>>> Giorgio F. Arcodia
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
>>> Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
>>> Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione
>>> Edificio U6 - stanza 4101
>>> Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1
>>> 20126 Milano
>>>
>>> Tel.: (+39) 02 6448 4946
>>> Fax: (+39) 02 6448 4863
>>> E-mail: giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, 22 Jul 2012 10:04:00 -0700
>>>   Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at U.WASHINGTON.EDU> wrote:
>>>
>>>  Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I have a question posed to me by a non-linguist friend that borders on
>>>> trivia, but is perhaps deeply interesting nonetheless. Does anybody
>>>> know of
>>>> a culture where no distinction is made between male given names and
>>>> female
>>>> given names? That is, cultures where if somebody says to you something
>>>> like
>>>> "I'd like you to meet Gkz'itfo some day," you have no cues as to whether
>>>> Gkz'itfo is a man or a woman. English and some other European languages
>>>> have SOME names like that (Lee, Kim, Sandy, etc.), but I wonder if there
>>>> are places where ALL names are gender-neutral.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks. I'll summarize.
>>>>
>>>> --fritz
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Frederick J. Newmeyer
>>>> Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
>>>> Adjunct Professor, U of British Columbia and Simon Fraser U
>>>> [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>
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