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Names and Taboos: a Naming Taboo and an Ancestor-Friendly Naming Practice

  • The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea
  • Abbr : 사회언어학
  • 2014, 22(1), pp.161-180
  • Publisher : The Sociolinguistic Society Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > Linguistics

Yeon, Ho-tak 1

1가톨릭관동대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper is concerned with a comparative analysis of the naming taboo of Kihwee(忌諱) and the so-called name-friendly attitude of Chinhwee(親諱), the willing adoption of one's ancestor's name. The goals of this study are to investigate the origin, the evolution, the objects and methods of the naming taboo, and to compare it with the naming practice of Chinhwee which seems presumably opposed to it in terms of showing how each one of them is realized in the agricultural society based on Confucianism and in the nomadic culture sphere, respectively. A naming taboo is a socio-cultural taboo against speaking or writing the given names of exalted persons in Confucian countries including Korea and China. There are several kinds of naming taboo: the naming taboo of the state (國諱); the naming taboo of the clan (家諱); the naming taboo of the holinesses (聖人諱). People tend to figure out plausible reasons and methods not to violate a naming taboo. There existed at least three ways to avoid using a taboo character: changing the character to another one which usually is a synonym or sounds like the character being avoided; leaving the character as a blank; omitting a stroke in the character, especially the final stroke. The problem is that the custom of naming taboo had a contradiction in itself: without knowing what the emperors' names were one could hardly be expected to avoid them, so somehow the emperors' names had to be informally transmitted to the populace to allow them to learn them in order to avoid them. Since every reign of every dynasty had its own naming taboos, the study of naming taboos can help date an ancient text, and understand the culture concerned.

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