The word for forbidden words....

[xuexiansheng]

In ancient text when they don't use a word (because it was used in an Emperor's name) and they substitute it for another similar character...what is that called in Chinese?

 

Thanks!

[skylee]

諱? 避諱?

https://www.moedict.tw/諱

https://www.moedict.tw/避諱

[Hofmann]

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_taboo.

[xuexiansheng]

@skylee Thanks!

 

@Hofmann- Thanks, it was right there in wikipedia!

[li3wei1]

Sorry for resurrecting this thread, but as there's a link to the Wikipedia page, I might as well stick with it.

 

My question is, is there a list somewhere, or a study, of the ways in which this naming taboo has influenced the development of characters? I mean a list of the actual characters.

 

For instance, quite often I come across pairs of two-character words, AC and BC, where A and B have the same pronunciation, and might even share a semantic or phonetic component (or one is just the other with a component added), and the meanings of AC and BC are the same or very similar, and I think, surely hundreds of years ago someone made a mistake, and it has survived. Now I'm thinking maybe it's possible that this 'mistake' was down to taboo-avoidance.