A Sociolinguistic Study on the Cultural Values Reflected in Chinese Men's and Women's Given Names in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Hsu Yu-shuang, 許玉霜
• Other Authors: Joseph H. Hsu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2000
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/29212227492524541048

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 語言學研究所 === 88 === The aim of this study is to investigate cultural values reflected in Chinese given names to see how men and women are valued differently in Chinese society and further find out what are the different sex-role expectations revealed in names. We examine what cultural values are reflected in men’s and women’s given names. Further, we compare different cultural values reflected between men’s and women’s given names to see that there are more cultural values reflected in men’s names than in women’s names. This shows that people have more expectations of men than of women. In comparison of different cultural values reflected between men’s and women’s given names, we find that there are three contrast pairs of sex-role expectations revealed in Chinese given names. The first one is the dominant role of men and the subordinate role of women in the value of Chinese family ethics; the second one is the active role of men and the wealth guarding role of women in the wealth value; and the last one is the strength of men and the tenderness of women in the value of positive personal traits. These different sex-role expectations are generally expected to be complementary to each other in Chinese society.