卷三  中国家庭姓氏

 

中国汉族人的全名由姓和名。中文姓名的特点是，姓总是在前，名跟在其后，千百年来，父姓一直世代相传。然而，如今，孩子跟母姓并不罕见。一般来说，名有一个或两个汉字，通常承载父母对孩子的愿望。从孩子的名字可以推断出父母希望孩子成为什么样的人，或者预期他们过什么样的生活。父母非常重视给孩子取名，因为名字往往会伴随孩子一生。 

 

The full name of a Han Chinese is combined by his or her family name and given name. A feature in Chinese names is that people’s family names often come before their given names. For thousands of years, the father’s family names have been passed down through generations. However, today it is not uncommon to see a child to have his or her mother’s family name. Generally speaking, a given name contains one or two Chinese characters, which shows parents’ good wishes to their child. From a given name, we can infer what kind of person parents expect their child to be, or what kind of life they expect their child to have. Therefore, Chinese parents pay a lot of attention to naming their child because names will accompany the child’s life.