Zhu Yuanzhang was a capable person, who could lead soldiers, who could fight wars, who would become emperors, who founded the Ming Dynasty, and who was a chemist...
What the? chemist?
Really no joke, on the Internet, there are people who call Zhu Yuanzhang the "godfather of chemistry"!
Believe it or not, these two portraits are Zhu Yuanzhang
Here! Let's take a look at the names of a few Ming dynasty princes:
Zhu Gongxi, Zhu Shenlei, Zhu Tongguo, Zhu Tongyin,
Zhu Zaitie, Zhu Zaina, Zhu Junjun, Zhu Fengjie,
Zhu Cheng cobalt, Zhu Cheng palladium, Zhu En copper, Zhu En potassium,
Zhu Shuai zinc, Zhu Huan lanthanum, Zhu Zheng polonium, Zhu Xiaoti,
Zhu Xiaoli, Zhu Yi Beryllium, Zhu Mi-cadmium, Zhu Xiaovanadium,
……
Is there a familiar feeling?
periodic table
You can try to find the names of these people above inside
You may wonder, is Zhu Yuanzhang a science and engineering man lurking in the Ming Dynasty? They all used chemical elements to name the descendants of the royal family!
But on second thought, something is wrong.
For example, radium was discovered by Marie Curie in 1902, but this Zhu Shenlei was a wanli dynasty man who was crowned king of Yonghe in 1577, and he certainly did not know that his name was so popular.
That, with thousands of commonly used Chinese characters not used, why did the Ming Dynasty emperor give such a cold name?
This is indeed due to their obsessive-compulsive ancestor Zhu Yuanzhang!
Grandson of the Chu clan
As we all know, Zhu Yuanzhang's original name was Zhu Zhongba, his father's name was Zhu Wusi, his grandfather Zhu Chuyi, his great-grandfather Zhu Sijiu, Gaozu Zhu Bailiu, and the fifth ancestor Zhu Zhongba, all of whom were named after their date of birth, and in the Yuan Dynasty, only the lowest people took this name.
After Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne as emperor, he deeply resented these names, and was afraid that his descendants would also take out such names.
So Zhu Yuanzhang sent someone to write twenty-four poems and five words for his twenty-four sons and nephews, for example, the prince was:
Yunwen obeyed the ancestral precepts, and the Great Emperor of Qinwu won,
By the way, it is advisable to meet auspicious, and the teacher is good and good at using Sheng.
Yan Wang is:
Gao Zhan Qi saw you, Hou Zai Yi ChangYu,
Cihe Yi Bozhong, Jian Jingdi Xianyou.
When he asked the descendants of the royal family to name them, the second word of the name must be arranged in the order of the poem, which is actually the word generation.
For example, the descendants of King Yan have this name (these people later became emperors):
Zhu Gaozi (Emperor Hongxi of Renzong)
Zhu Zhanji (Emperor Xuanzong Xuande)
Zhu Qizhen (Emperor Yingzong orthodoxy/Emperor Tianshun)
Zhu Jianshen (Emperor Xianzong Chenghua)
Zhu Youfan (Emperor Xiaozong Hongzhi)
You can check it out in the poem above.
Is it enough to set the second word? At least for obsessive-compulsive Disorder Zhu Yuanzhang is not enough.
For example, the eighth generation of the prince's family is "Zhu Da X", if you name him "Zhu Da Dog", it is not as good as Zhu Zhongba?
Zhu Yuanzhang thought that the names of his sons were all wooden characters, such as the prince's name was Zhu Biao, and the King of Yan's name was Zhu Di.
Zhu Di
Wood is one of the five elements, and Zhu Yuanzhang decided that the last word of the name of the royal descendants should be side by the five elements.
His son is next to the wooden character, according to the law of the five elements of mutual survival:
Wood makes fire, and Sun Tzu is next to the word fire,
Fire is born of earth, great-grandchildren are next to the earth characters,
Native gold, the grandson is next to the golden word,
Jin Sheng Shui, the fifth grandson is next to the water character,
Aquatic wood, the sixth grandson returned to the wooden character.
By analogy, Zhu Yuanzhang fixed the side of his descendants' names.
At this point, the descendants of the Zhu clan can come up with a tall name, right? Unfortunately, Zhu Yuanzhang overlooked a point:
His children and grandchildren are so fertile!
At first, everyone still used relatively nice words such as "Ming", "Yu", "Jun" and so on, but later, they found that these words were not enough!
So what to do?
When the princes thought about it, Taizu only stipulated the side of the last word, and did not say that these words must be particularly tall. So they gave the babies these names:
Zhu Shen saw, Zhu Enqian, Zhu Xiao cone, Zhu Mi shovel, Zhu Mi tongs...
Although "saw", "shovel", and "cone" all sound the same as tools, they can finally meet the ancestral precepts, and as for whether they have failed to live up to Zhu Yuanzhang's painstaking heart, the princes can't take care of it.
Soon, these princes discovered a more serious problem:
Not even those words!
The tall characters and the words that had been stripped of dirt were gone, and they used up all the words that conformed to the ancestral precepts.
What to do? make!
As a result, a large number of strange characters were created. This is where the names of the twenty people at the beginning of the article come from.
Yuansu life name
Zhu Yuanzhang, the "prophet" of the chemical world, let his descendants create such a strange name; and another chemical genius hundreds of years later, even made the name of Zhu's descendants "Liufang Hundred Generations".
This man's name was Xu Shou, a famous shipbuilder, chemist, and translator in the late Qing Dynasty... In short, an all-rounder.
Portrait of Xu Shou
At that time, the periodic table of chemical elements had just been transmitted to China, and Xu Shou, who was also a chemist and translator, naturally took on the task of translating the periodic table.
Several of these elements are known to Xu Shou, such as gold, silver, copper, iron, and tin. He found that the elements were all metal, and the names were all gold. So he set a rule:
All metals are translated with gold characters.
In addition to metals, there is also a large category of elements that are gaseous elements. He naturally set a second rule:
All gas elements are translated with the word gas.
The rest are all written in stone.
As the saying goes: sooner or later the flag will be returned. Xu Shou encountered the same problems as the long-forgotten Ming dynasty royal family:
Not enough words!
And the elements are not like the Ming Dynasty royal family can be named with common words to avoid ambiguity, such as if an element is called "money", then "a sword was built with a lot of money", how many meanings does this sentence mean?
In addition to those "ancient" elements, Xu Shou could only translate these elements with some strange characters.
Xu Shou racked his brains and didn't come up with enough strange words.
Until one day, he opened the "History of Ming".
After seeing the names of those princes, he was overjoyed and immediately selected the appropriate word according to the harmonic sound of the English name of the element. The metal piece is solved.
But next to the stone characters and the qi characters, no one could help Xu Shou anymore.
But the names of those Ming dynasty royal families added to his confidence: Since the Ming dynasty royal family can create characters, why can't I Xu Shou?
So he filled in the entire periodic table according to his own rules, with the exception of two exceptions:
One is mercury, although it is metal, but it is not used next to the gold word, because mercury is liquid, and this word has been used since ancient times; the other is bromine, non-metallic non-air, which is applied next to the stone word, but its form is generally liquid, so it is changed to three points of water.
Since then, whenever a new element is discovered, Chinese will translate according to Xu Shou's regulations.
For example, in May 2017, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the State Language and Writing Work Committee, and the National Committee for the Approval of Scientific and Technological Terms identified Chinese names for four new elements, namely:
All of them were translated according to Xu Shou's regulations.
Today, we see this periodic table of chemical elements, Xu Shou is indispensable.
And who would have thought that this table also had Zhu Yuanzhang's great contribution?