This is a short article based on the Chinese Ancient Figures Biography Database. After extensive and complex data cleaning, I uncovered the secrets of ancient Chinese women’s names:
1) Only a very small number of women’s names have been preserved;
2) The specific connotations of women’s names in different eras reflect the expectations and demands of men at the time.
In the comments section of this article, many readers told me that they had never paid attention to their grandmothers’ names before. After reading this article, they went home, asked their grandmothers, and then left messages telling me about it. One comment that left a deep impression on me was from a reader who shared that her grandmother never had a name as a child. When the new China was established and personal information needed to be registered for household registration, her father wanted to name her Shuxing (being dutiful), but her grandmother, who was not well-educated, insisted on naming herself Peiying (being heroic).
Due to the non-standard storage of the original data and the abundance of dirty data, the data cleaning process took a considerable amount of time. However, these comments made me feel that it was all worthwhile.
Read more: WeChat (in Chinese)
By 2023-12-28: Clicks 70,000+; Likes 6000+