A Name-meme-based Study Of Chinese Given Names

All men have names and names are the appellative symbols of men. A name for a person is just like a label for an object in that it distinguishes one from the others. A person’s name is a specific symbol representing the individual’s life, and it possesses the features of specifity, possession and permanency. It comes from needs of social communication and exits in the form of language, playing an essential role in daily communication. Choices for a name seem to be casual. However, as a matter of fact, it is selected elaborately as you can see that each one of them holds some distinctive national features or rich cultural connotations. With the deepening study of language, studies on names attract more and more linguists’ attention.Memetics is a new theory that based on Charles Darwin’s Biological Evolution Theory in explaining regularities of cultural evolution. The core concept of memetics is meme which is proposed by Richard Dawnkins(1976) in his book The Selfish Gene. It is a new angle to language study, and many scholars apply the memetic theory to explain language phenomenon. Meme is a cultural unit that gets transmitted by imitation and duplication. It is inherited as genes and spreads all around like viruses. Language itself is a kind of meme; meanwhile personal names are a part of language. Therefore, meme, language and name have a close relationship with each other.By analyzing the relationship among meme, language and name, this thesis first proposes the concept of “name meme”. And then, it discusses the development and evolution of personal names from the perspective of memetics. Finally, the duplication, selection, variation and transmission of name meme are analyzed in detailed. The paper aims at finding out how names are developing and evolving; why some name mem can be selected and transmitted while others can not and what factors influence the name meme selection and transmission. Based on the above mentioned studies, the thesis makes a prediction on the several trends of personal names.The study reveals that a name meme is a specific language meme. The infecting process of a name meme is the same process of name development and evolution and they both follow the laws of cultural evolution. That is, under the influence of different beliefs, values and cultural connotation, the selection scope and transmission force of a name meme are different. Analyzing personal names from the memetic perspective is a new try, which not only extents the memetic application, but also deepens our understanding of our culture.