Awoxcsr'thé minor reasons why Europeans fail to take an interest in China and the Chinese, we may reckon the uncouthness of the native names. It is not easy to be very much interested ina story, the hero of which is called Teihchungyu and the heroine Shueyping-siu. A very little examination, however, into the subject of nomenclature, will show that what seems to be collection of unintelligible sounds is really a fruitful and entertaining study. Chinese surnames all mean something, and each appélation has as distinct a 'History as the names in Burke's Peerage. 'The great authority on the subject ist! well-known work called the: Hundred Family Surnames," a volume which teally contains four hundred and - fifty-four surnames, This work, compared' with which the second chapter of the book of Ezra is light and easy' reading, contains nothing but surnames.. It is in fact a rhymed catalogue. With regard to the surnames and individual names of the Chinese, however, one: or two interesting facts may be observed. 'The surname is' of course the family name, and is to be found invariably in the Book above referred to.. No Chinaman's surname can be. authentic if it. is not to be found therein. An Englishman newly raised to the Peerage, casts about him for the name of some place with which he may claim connection. His ambition is, to link himself somehow with the land. But we believe we shall not err if we say that the Chinese have no territorial titles. Their surnames come, not from the land, but from this venerated catalogue. A man calls himself Tseang, Chin, Han or Yang, as Serames contains these appellation®. he likes, because the Hundred Family
e individual name which a China. man takes corresponds to the baptismal name of a Foreigner. When a child is a month old he gets his " milk name" ab it is called; when he goes first to school he gets his "book name;" again, when man marries he takes a new name, and when he attains legal age he frequently does the same. Thus a man has sometimes four names, all different, in addition to the surname which marks his family. This, fact renders the detection of a criminal often difficult, as men have various aliases, whereby justice is liable to be grievously puzzled. Foreign merchants need not be reminded of particular cases. when this Process has been proved to be practically very inconvenient.
The meanings of Chinese' surnames are similar to those in other countries, the equivalents of Wood," "Bird," "Black," "Stone," "Snow" ete, being common. One of the ear-hest writers on the subject remarks that "the Chinese generally suppose these surnames have been derived from some circumstance or incident connected with the situation or occupation of each of the several families, Thus the founder of the Lo or Pear Family, derived his surname from having had his residence beneath a pear tree. Others have obtained their surnames in similar manner. Some native writers, however, have supposed that many surnames of families in China had their origin the times of those early monarchies when all the territory within the four Seas was divided into nine chow or grand departments; and these subdivided into seventeen hundred and seventy three distinct kingdoms or principalities; the inhabitants. of each of these were known by the name of their prince, or.the person who stood at the head of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.