What's in a Name?

Why do we need to have names for people and places? Actually we don't need to have names but it's highly convenient to have "unique identifying sounds" to refer to a person or place; otherwise there would be a lot of "him" and "there" to confuse people.

A short story: You washed up on a deserted island as a baby. What's your name? You don't have one because there is no one there to call out and refer to you.

One day, an animal washes up. You call it "Animal".

The next day, another animal washes up and so you have to make a distinction between them. You call one "Dog" and the other one "Cat" as they happen to be a dog and cat.

While wandering, you find a woman who was also washed up as a baby. You call her "Woman" and she calls you "Man".

This is all in the language that you are inventing over time.

Several hundred years later, the island is discovered by explorers. After establishing language translation, they ask for the names of everything.

Not surprisingly, in your language, your tribe is named "People", the river is named "River" and a volcano is named "Volcano". There are men and women with names like "Tall", "Dark", "Handsome", "Pearl", "Bosom" and "Fury".

Actually, all names began as just descriptions to uniquely identify a person or place. For example, "Adam" means "a Man" in Hebrew. Most cultures still retain the meanings of people's names like "fragrant flower" or "tall leaf" or "red eagle" or "moonlight".

Many places have names like "New-Town" or "Weigh-Bridge" or "Hills-Borough" or "West-Hamlet".

As populations increase, names are not so unique anymore and so a second-name becomes needed from which there are many sources:-

Nearly all family-names are just groups. 

Grouping people by family is very convenient, especially for governments to differentiate between people. Of course, the family-name has to have a origin and there are many such origins.

The table below shows 5 most common Chinese surnames. They represent more than 400 million people.

Clan Mandarin Cantonese Hokkien 

王  Wang     Wong      Ong

李  Li       Lee       Li

張  Zhang    Chong     Teo

劉  Liu      Lau       Low

陳  Chen     Chan      Tan