given names

Mon Jul 23 08:35:55 UTC 2012

Dear Chao,

I have never done any research on the topic of given 
names, but my impression is that gender-neutrality is 
fairly common with single-syllable names. I can think of 
many single-syllable given names, as 真 zhen, 捷 jie, 丹 dan, 
维 wei, 超 chao, 永 yong, 航 hang, etc. which could be 
attributed to members of either sex (with some prevalence 
maybe, but no hard-and-fast rule). Also, some 'patriotic' 
two-syllable names as 振华 Zhenhua ('revitalise China') or 
胜光 Shengguang ('victory light') may be used both for a boy 
and a girl (again, possibly with some prevalence of either 
gender).
In short, what I wanted to point out to F. Newmeyer is 
that:

(1) you do have gender-neutral names in Chinese/Sinitic, 
and they are more than English ('many' on a relative 
scale, rather than on an absolute scale)

(2)since in Chinese culture names are not necessarily 
chosen from a 'pool' (as it is the case in the European 
tradition for many, if not most, people), but may be 
created on purpose with a combination of characters of the 
family's choice, the clue to the gender of the name-bearer 
is in the meaning of the characters/morphemes which make 
it up. This is pretty much different from the European 
naming conventions, in which e.g. 'Peter' is a male name 
because St. Peter belonged to the male gender. I would 
guess that 存田 Cuntian ('preserve-rice.field') is a male 
name, but prof. Yang Cuntian of Renmin University is a 
woman; thus, sometimes you may be puzzled as to the gender 
of the name-bearer even if you have the written form of 
the name.

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 19:44:25 -0400
 Chao Li <chao.li at AYA.YALE.EDU> wrote:
> 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]
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>