A Socio-cultural Perspective Of Chinese And English Personal Names

A name is a sign as well as an information window, through which people may better understand a society and its culture. The information of a nation's history, language, psychology, religion, customs, concepts of morality and value are all implicated in individual names. Knowing the information embodied in the personal names can help improve the cross-cultural communication between Chinese people and Western people.Upon the theoretical mode of Chinese Cultural Linguistics that language and culture interact with each other, this paper makes a socio-cultural analysis and comparison of the similarities and differences in the structures, sources and features of the Chinese and English personal names as well as their culture implications. Through the analysis of the opposite name structure and the reasons behind these differences, we find out that the Chinese people are group-oriented and English speakers are individual-oriented, which constitutes the major difference between these two cultural backgrounds. By probing into the history and sources of surnames and features of given names, we find that cultural similarities——the sense of root-seeking, pursuit of social status and honor, good wishes from parents, different expectations for their boys and girls, individuality, surnames as given names——are all contained in the different name systems, which might facilitate the cross-cultural communication between the Chinese and English-speaking people, and that the world is made pleasantly diverse and colorful with the help of cultural differences of hierarchy, worship of surname, domination of Han culture, Yin-Yang and Five Elements, family patriarch and Confucianism indicated in Chinese name system and those of optimistic attitude towards life, fusion of different cultures, equality, Christianity implicated in English name system, co-existing and harmoniously competing with each other in beauty and fascination.