The sanitary conditions in ancient times were not good. Therefore, three months after the birth of the ancient people, the father would officially give the child a name after he was sure that the child would survive. "First name" is used to address elders at home when they were young. "Baby name" is abbreviated from "first name", usually for convenience or to express intimacy. When you enter society as an adult, you have to choose another name. This "name" is what we call a "zi" for your peers and juniors to call you. Generally speaking, those who address themselves respectfully, respectfully, and those who respect the younger should address those who respect their elders as "Zi"; those who address themselves, humbly, and those who respect their elders should address those who humble themselves as "name"; among peers, except for acquaintances, there can be no formal restrictions. In addition to naming names according to etiquette and law, it is generally necessary to address people by names, otherwise it will be impolite behavior. After the Republic of China, "name" and "zi" respectively represented the names of a person at different stages of his growth. Therefore, as the times changed, there was no obvious difference between "names" in society, so "names" were used together.

"Zi" is usually derived from "name", so whether it is given by a teacher or chosen by oneself, there is often a certain connection between a word and a name. Generally speaking, the most common relationships between names and characters are as follows:

1. Synonyms and mutual training. This means that the name and the word have the same meaning, or can explain each other. For example, Zhuge Liang's courtesy name is Kong Ming. Of course, "Liang" and "Ming" are synonymous. By analogy, the names of Confucius' students Zaiyu and Ban Gu also have the same meaning.

2. Antonym is relative. This means that the meaning of the name is opposite to that of the word. It means to hope that people will not go beyond or fall short of, and to have a check and balance. For example, Han Yu's word "retreat", Zhu Xi's word "yuanhui", etc. all require people to always keep in mind the pros and cons and know the difference between advance and retreat, light and darkness.

3. Related associations. Some "names" and "characters" are not necessarily the same or opposite, but have a causal or conjunctive relationship. For example, Bai Juyi's character "乐天" is derived from "乐天" which means "Juyi"; while Su Shi's character "Zizhan" is derived from Pingshi (Shi is the crossbar used as an armrest in front of ancient carriages) to look.

4. Change of original name. This is simply some simple changes to the original masterpiece, and this change is irregular. For example, Li Bai's character "Taibai", Du Mu's character "Muzhi", Qin Hui's character "Huizhi", etc. Most of them are added with a dummy character or changed font style to become "zi".

In addition to expressing titles, names and characters can also express kinship relationships. The most common form is to use one character in the name or character to express the peer relationship. Nowadays, most of the names of brothers and sisters use this form; if it is a single character, use the same radical, such as Su Shi. , Brothers Su Zhe. In addition, the name can also show the ranking of eldest and youngest. In the pre-Qin Dynasty, Meng (Bo, Chang), Zhong, Shu, and Ji were usually added in front of the name to express it. For example, the two brothers Boyi and Shuqi, Kongqiu's courtesy name Zhongni, etc. were represented by numbers in the Tang Dynasty and were called Xingdi. For example, "Du Er" in Gao Shi's "The Supplements to Du Er" by Renri refers to Du Fu, and "Yuan Jiu" in Bai Juyi's "Yu Yuan Jiu Shu" refers to Yuan Zhen. They all use names to express the order of elders and younger ones.