Chinese Personal Naming: Top Ten Chinese Given Names of Baby Girls Born in 2021

Irena Kałużyńska

doi:10.18290/rh25739.1

Published : 2025-11-19

Vol. 73 No. 9 (2025)

Chinese Personal Naming: Top Ten Chinese Given Names of Baby Girls Born in 2021

Irena Kałużyńska

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6043-5557

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh25739.1

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some linguistic and cultural aspects of the contemporary Chinese personal naming system. These aspects are crucial while analysing the top ten Chinese female given names as those of the highest occurrence among names of baby girls born and registered in 2021 in the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC). The analysis is focused on their lexical and associative meanings. The names are categorised according to the interpretation of the lexical meaning of the constituent lexemes/terms. Also, the repetitiveness of given names is analysed. The Chinese naming system has never restricted the inventory of possible given names, i.e. given names are supposed to be formed individually (a new name for a new person). However, in practice, many people make use of already existing given names (an old name for a new person). As a result, it happens that hundreds of millions of people in China have the same given name, which undermines these onyms’ main purpose – to identify the referent.

Keywords:

Chinese given names, Chinese female names, repetitiveness of Chinese names, semantic transparency of Chinese names, meaning of names

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