复旦大学：《文化人类学 Cultural Anthropology》阅读资料_The Named and the Nameless.pdf

the named and the nameless gender and person in Chinese society RUBIES. WATSON-University of Pittsburgh In Chinese society names classify and individuate, they have transformative powers, and they are an important form of self expression. Some names are private, some are chosen for their public effect. Many people have a confusing array of names while others are nameless. the theory and practice of personal naming in Chinese society is extremely complex and unfort nately little studied For the male villagers of rural Hong Kong, naming marks important social transitions: the more names a man has the more " socialized" and also, in a sense the more"individuated he becomes To attain social adulthood a man must have at least two names but most have more. By the time a male reaches middle age, he may be known by four or five names. village women, by contrast, are essentially nameless. Like boys, infant girls are named when they are one month old, but unlike boys they lose this name when they marry. Adult women are known (in reference and address) by kinship terms, teknonyms, or category terms such as"ol woman In Chinese society personal names constitute an integral part of the language of joking, of asting and of exhibiting ones education and erudition the chinese themselves are fasci- nated by personal names: village men enjoy recounting stories about humorous or clumsy names, educated men appreciate the elegance of an auspicious name, and all males worry about the quality of their own names and those of their sons. to a large extent women are excluded from this discourse. They cannot participate because in adulthood they are not named, nor do they name others. Until very recently the majority of village women were illit- erate and so could not engage in the intellectual games that men play with written names Women were not even the subjects of these conversations The namelessness of adult women and their inability to participate in the naming of others highlights in a dramatic way the vast gender distinctions that characterize traditional Chinese culture. The study of names gives us considerable insight into the ways in which gender and person are constructed in Chinese society. Judged against the standard of men the evidence presented here suggests that village women do not, indeed cannot, attain full personhood. The lives of men are punctuated by the acquisition of new names, new roles, new responsibilities d new privileges; womens lives, in comparison, remain indistinct and indeterminate Personal naming provides an insight into the construction of gender and person in Chinese society. The process of naming marks important social tra Chinese men: the more names a man has the more socialized and also, in a sense the more individuated he becomes. By contrast, married women in rural China are essentially nameless. If personhood is a process of social growth, judged against the standard of men, the evidence presented here suggests that Chinese women do not, indeed cannot, attain full personhood. Naming, gender, person, literacy the named and the nameless 619

In his essay"'Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali, Clifford Geertz argues that our social world is populated not by anybodies. , but by somebodies, concrete classes of determinate per- sons positively characterized and appropriately labeled"(1973: 363). It is this process by which anybodies are converted into somebodies that concerns me here Do men and women become omebodies'in the same way? Are they made equally determinate, positively characterized Although this discussion is based primarily on field research carried out in the Hong Kong New Territories, examples of naming practices have been drawn from other areas of Chinese culture as well. It is difficult to determine the extent to which the patterns described in this paper are indicative of rural China in general. Available evidence suggests that there is considerable overlap between Hong Kong patterns of male naming and those of preliberation Chinese so- ciety and present-day rural Taiwan(see for example Eberhard 1970; Kehl 1971; Sung 1981 Wu 1927). Unfortunately, there have been no studies that specifically examine the differences tween men 's and womens naming, although brief references in martin Yangs study of a Shantung village(1945: 124)and in Judith Stacey's account of women in the People's Republic (1983: 43, 131)suggest that the gender differences discussed here are not unique to Hong Kong In making these statements I do not wish to suggest that there are no substantial differences in ersonal naming between rural Hong Kong and other parts of China. a general survey of per onal naming in China, especially one that takes the postrevolution era into account, has yet This paper draws heavily on ethnographic evidence gathered in the village of Ha Tsuen, a Tsuen share the surname Teng and trace descent to a common ancestor who settled in this region during the 12th century (see R. Watson 1985). For most villagers postmarital residence is virilocal/patrilocal. The Ha Tsuen Teng practice surname exogamy, which in the case of a single-lineage village means that all wiv from outside th ty. These women arrive in Ha Tsuen as strangers and their early years of marriage are spent accommodating to a new family and new community The Teng find this completely natural; daughters, 'they say, are born looking out; they belong to others Patrilineal values dominate social life in Ha Tsuen Women are suspect because they are outsiders. As Margery Wolf points out, Chinese women are both marginal and essential to the families into which they marry (1972: 35). They are necessary because they produce the next generation, yet as outsiders their integration is never complete. Women are economically de pendent on the family estate but they do not have shareholding rights in that estate. Half the village land in Ha Tsuen is owned by the lineage(see R. Watson 1985: 61-72), and the other half is owned by private(male)landlords. Women have no share in this land; they do not own movable property nor do they have rights to inherit it. Few married women are employed in wage labor, and since the villagers gave up serious agriculture in the 1960s, most women are dependent on their husbands paychecks for family income. At the time I conducted my re- search(1977-78)Ha Tsuen had a population of approximately 2500-all of whom are Can tones speakers. naming an infant Among the Cantonese a child ' s soul is not thought to be firmly attached until at least 30 days after its birth. during the first month of life the child and mother are secluded from all but the immediate family. After a month has passed, the child is considered less susceptible to soul loss and is introduced into village life. The infant is given a name by his or her father or grandfather at a ceremony called"full month"(man yueh). If the child is a son, the "full month"festivities will be as elaborate as the family can afford; if, on the other hand, a girl is born, there may be 620 american ethnologist

little or no celebration (except, perhaps, a special meal for family members). The naming cer dis,ny for a boy normally involves a banquet for neighbors and village elders, along with the ribution of red eggs to members of the community The first name a child is given is referred to as his or her ming 2 This name (ming)may be based on literary or classical allusions. It may express a wish for the childs or familys future or it may enshrine some simple event that took place at or near the time of the childs birth. Examples of this kind of naming are found not only in Ha Tsuen but in other areas of China as well. Arlington, in an early paper on Chinese naming, describes how the name "sleeve"was given to a girl of his acquaintance who at the time of her birth had en wrapped in a sleeve(1923: 319). In the Peoples Republic of China, people born during the Korean War might be called"Resist the United States"(Fan- mei)or"Aid Korea"(Pang ch'ao). Alternatively, children may be given the name of their birthplace, for example "Born in Anhwei"(Hui-sheng) or"Thinking of Yunnan"(Hsiang-yun). In the past girl babies might be named Nai ("To Endure"). This name was given to infant girls who survived an attempted infanticide. One way of killing an infant was to expose it to the elements. If a girl survived this ordeal, she might be allowed to live. In these cases the name Nai commemorated the childs feat of survival a childs name may express the parents' desire for no more children. For instance, in Taiwan a fifth or sixth child may be named Beui, a Hokkien term meaning""Last Child. Alternatively, a father may try to assure that his next child will be a son by naming a newborn daughter " Joined to Brother"( Lien-ti). There are several girls with this name in Ha Tsuen. a father or grandfather might express his disappointment or disgust by naming a second or third daughter " Too Many"(A-to) or"Little Mistake"(Hsiao-t so) or"Reluctant to Feed"(Wang-shih).A sickly child might be given the name of a healthy child. my informants told me that a long awaited son may be given a girl's name to trick the wandering ghosts into thinking the child had no value and therefore could be ignored(see also Sung 1981: 81-82). For example, a Ha Tsuen villager, who was the only son of a wealthy family(born to his fathers third concubine) was known by everyone as"Little Slave Girl"(in Cantonese, Mui-jai In most cases the infant receives a ming during the full month ceremony but this name is little sed. For the first year or two most children are called by a family nickname ("milk name"or nai ming). Babies are sometimes given milk names like"Precious"(A-pao), or A-buh(mimick ing the sounds infants make)or"Eldest Luck, "or"Second Luck, "indicating sibling ord Some care and consideration is given to a child s ming, especially if it is a boy. By referring to the Confucian classics or by alluding to a famous poem, the name may express the learning and sophistication of the infants father or grandfather. The name, as we will see, may also save the child from an inauspicious fate. Commonly girls' names(ming)are less distinctive and less considered than are boys names. And, as we have seen, girls' names may also be less flattering "Too Many"or"Little Mistake. " Often a general, classificatory name is given to an infant girl Martin Yang reports from rural Shantung that Hsiao-mei("Little Maiden")was a"generic"girls name in his village (1945: 124). Most Chinese personal names are composed of two characters, which follow the one char- acter surname(for example, Mao Tse-tung or Teng Hsiao-ping). One of the characters of the ming may be repeated for all the children of the same sex in the family or perhaps all sons born into the lineage one generation (for example, a generation or sibling set might hat personal names like Hung-hui, Hung-chi, Hung-sheng and so on. ) Birth order may also be indicated in the child's name. In these cases part of the name indicates group affiliation and sibling order. However, one of the characters is unique to the individual and so the child distinguished from his siblings. a variation on this theme occurs when a parent or grandparer elects a name for all sons or grandsons from a group of characters that share a single element (known as the radical--a structured component found in every chinese character), For exam ple, Margaret Sung (1981: 80)in her survey of Chinese naming practices on Taiwan notes that the named and the nameless 621

in some families all son s names may be selected from characters that contain the"man"rad ical (for example names like"Kind"len), "Handsome'IChunl, or"Protect"(Paol) Individuation of the name, Sung points out, is very strong in Chinese society (1981: 88). There s no category of words reserved specifically for personal names and care is taken to make names (particularly boys names)distinct. The Chinese find the idea of sharing ones given name with millions of other people extraordinary. 5 In Taiwan, Sung notes that individuation of one's name is so important that the government has established a set of rules for name changes (1981: 88). According to these regulations a name can be changed when two people with ex- actly the same name live in the same city or county or have the same place of work. ""Inelegant names or names shared with wanted criminals can also be changed In Ha Tsuen a boy might be named, in Cantonese, Teng Tim-sing, which translates Teng"To Increase Victories", another person could be called Teng Hou-sing "Reliably Accomplish ( Teng being the shared surname). Parents, neighbors, and older siblings will address the child or young unmarried adult(male or female) by his or her ming or by a nickname. Younger sib- lings are expected to use kin terms in addressing older siblings. It should be noted that, in con- trast to personal names, Chinese surnames do not convey individual meaning When used in a sentence or poem, the character mao(the same character used in Mao Tse-tung)means ha fur, feathers, but when it is used as a surname it does not carry any of these connotations ne power of names: names that change ones luck Names classify people into families, generational sets, and kin groups. ideally, Chinese per- sonal names also have a unique quality. Personal names carry meanings; they express wishes (for more sons or no more daughters), mark past events ("Sleeve"or"Endure"), and convey a amily's learning and status. beyond this rather restricted sense there is, however, another level of meaning. According to Chinese folk concepts each person has a unique constitution-a dif- ferent balance of the five elements(fire, water, metal, earth and wood) when the child is about ne month old a family will usually have a diviner cast the childs horoscope. The horoscope consists of eight characters(pa tzu)two each for the hour, day, month and year of birth. the combination of these characters determines in part what kind of person one is (what kind of haracteristics one has) and what will happen in future years. However, the pa tzu do not rep- resent destiny: one is not bound to act out this fate By means of esoteric knowledge a persons fate can be changed. Perhaps the most common method of accomplishing such a change is through naming. For example, if one of the five elements is missing from a person s constitution or is not properly balanced with other ele- ments, the name(ming)may then include a character with the radical for that element. In the event of illness the diviner may suggest that the patient suffers from an imbalance of wood and that the radical for this element be added to the childs name. In such a case the character mei (plum), for example, may replace one of the original characters of the ming and thus save the child from a bad fate, illness, or perhaps death Mei achieves this astounding feat not because there is anything intrinsically wood-like about mei but because the written character mei has two major components: mu, the radical for wood and another symbol that is largely phoneti It is the written form of the character that is important here; in spoken Chinese there is nothing at suggests that mei has within it the element wood i will return to this point later. Significantly, it is not only ones own horoscope that matters; one must also be in balance with the horoscopes of parents, spouses, and offspring It is particularly important that the five elements of mother and child be properly matched to ensure mutual health. If conditions of conflict arise and nothing is done to resolve this conflict the child may become ill and even die. A name change, however, can rectify the situation. It is obvious that Chinese personal names do things: they not only classify and distinguish but also have an efficacy in their own 622 american ethnologist