Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

The word for forbidden words....


xuexiansheng

Recommended Posts

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!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Click here to reply. Select text to quote.

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...