Full Citation

Title: Contemporary By-Names of Chinese Places

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2019

ISBN:

ISSN: 00784648

DOI: 10.17651/ONOMAST.63.13

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the distinguished properties of by-names as forms differentfrom official ones, to analyze their structural and semantic features and to search for their historicalevidence. By-names of Chinese places should not be defined as unusual and informal, since actually in many cases by-names are formal and very common in China nowadays. By-names are generally bestowed on important places (mostly cities) that win the public interest. Most of them have twostructural parts, the front specific parts are determiners / qualifiers and the back ones are generics.The generics generally are: cheng 城 ‘town / city’, du 都 ‘capital’, jiang 江 ‘river’, shan 山 ‘mountain’, dao 岛 ‘island’ etc. The lexical meanings of lexical items forming specific parts of by-namesmainly refer to animals, plants, minerals, local manufactured products, climate and natural scenery,geographical location, humans, areas, etc. Chinese contemporary by-names, used on various occasions, vary in frequency and stability. The by-names discussed in the paper only account for a smallproportion and are listed just due to their relatively high frequency, stability and acceptability.

Url: https://onomastica.ijp.pan.pl/index.php/ONOM/article/view/80

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Authors: Wang, Xiaoqiong; Kałużyńska, Irena

Periodical (Full): Onomastica

Issue:

Volume: 63

Pages: 241-261

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Other

Countries: China