The explosive name is out, how to name the baby to avoid "déjà vu"? | Lychee Reviews

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(The author Simon, special commentator of Lychee News, well-known commentator, columnist; this article is an exclusive manuscript of Lychee News Client and Lychee Network, please indicate the source when reprinting.) ）

A few days ago, the Household Administration Research Center of the Ministry of Public Security released the latest national name report: Among the names of newborns born in 2021 and have been registered for household registration, the 50 words with the highest frequency of use are Ze, Zi, Zi, Yu, Mu, etc. Compared with 2020, the words Xi, Rui, Lin, and Hang are favored. It is worth noting that the number of users of "Muchen" reached 23,000, becoming the first choice for male newborn names, and the number of users of "Ruoxi" reached 18,000, becoming the first choice for female newborn names.

Compared with the popular "Zixuan" and "Zihan" in previous years, the latest popular names still have a strong "literary and artistic atmosphere", and some people say that this is because young parents are influenced by youth idol dramas. This may be a factor, but from a longer-term perspective, the gentrification, personalization, and abandonment of single-character names of newborns is a major trend since the new century.

Name culture is the embodiment of the spirit of the times, but also the product of different eras. Some names were popular in this era, but may have been cold in others, from ancient times to the present. For example, the "zigzag" character in the Wei and Jin dynasties and the "Dao" character in the Sui and Tang dynasties were all the characters that people preferred to use in the name of the times, which was related to the social customs of the time. There is also a preference for word counts, in the Three Kingdoms period at the end of the Han Dynasty, people's names were almost all single-character names, and two-character names rarely appeared, which was also related to the cultural concept of using single-character names as precious at that time. After the population expansion, due to the emergence of the phenomenon of duplicate names, people are more willing to use two-character names to increase recognition.

In recent decades, we have experienced a period when political culture influenced the naming of newborns, such as the 1950s and 1960s, and many people had the words "founding of the country", "army" and "satellite" in their names, reflecting the characteristics of that era. After the 1980s, with the improvement of cultural level, more and more people hope to enrich the cultural connotation in children's names and increase traditional cultural elements. This makes newborn names appear "retro", for example, the original uncommon "Zi" has become a common word in the name, and words with strong traditional cultural meanings such as "Xuan" and "Haoran" are also widely favored.

Today, "Muchen" and "Ruoshi" are very popular, reflecting the characteristics of taking names and elegance. Some parents choose these more cultural elements in order to avoid the so-called "common words", but when most people think like this, it will inevitably cause new repetitions - the original personality and cold names have now become popular names, weakening the effect of "defamiliarization" and not achieving the purpose of pursuing individuality and sustenance "connotation".

China's name culture is vast and profound, and the images that can be used only in the "Book of Poetry" and "Chu Ci" are already a rich "material library", not to mention the subset of scripture history, poetry and song that have been circulated for thousands of years. There are so many words with cultural elements, but they may not be able to enter the vision of modern people. Everyone wants to give their children a unique name, but there are not many parents who do not follow the trend, take a different path, and can afford to look up the classical and ancient books.

Through the names of newborn hits, we can see the naming habits and preferences of most people, and we can also understand the trends of popular culture. Macroscopically, each era has a unique and popular name, enriching and extending the name culture. The era of name mapping and the change of culture is an interesting topic that deserves more in-depth analysis. From a personal point of view, parents should do more homework to find the most appropriate and special name that carries beautiful sustenance.