This paper studied the origin of Myeongnyundang(明倫堂), the common name of the main lecture halls at confucian schools in ancient China. Through an extensive investigation of local chronicles, biographies, decrees and construction essays, it found the first Myeongnyundang were titled on the main hall of a local school in the early Southern Song(南宋) period, and it might become the most popular name due to Zhuxi (朱熹), a famous confucian scholar in the Southern Song dynasty. In Yuan(元) period, it almost become the fixed name for the main lecture hall at local confucian schools, and even the official government documents began to use it as a common noun since the beginning of Ming(明) dynasty.

In the early stage of foreign element words entering the Chinese system, the translator of Huaxue Jianyuan has established the translation principle of element names. It mainly uses monosyllable and phonetic Chinese characters. It determines 48 transliteration elements either by referring to the transliteration of element names in Jinshi Shibie or by self-formulation. 47 out of 48 characters are ligatures, 21 of which are newly-formed, and 26 are borrowed from unfamiliar inherent Chinese characters. It presents the characteristics of high proportion of new characters, strong systematicness and applicability. There are 48 transliterated element names with recorded characters used by translators, 34 of which are still in use today. The transliteration principles established by translators and the selection or creation methods of transliterated element name characters have a great influence on the subsequent element name characters.

During the late Qing Dynasty, the translator of Jinshi Shibie transliterates names with foreign elements into multisyllabic Chinese words. Through this investigation, I found that the translator’s choice of Chinese characters to be used in the transliteration element was mainly based on Xiaoyun of Guangyun. The characters selected with the principles include those easy to write, easy to distinguish, commonly used, and used for systemization. The main reason for different usage of Chinese characters in element transliteration name was mainly the switch of homophones or variant characters.

This article has shown the actuality of Chinese character teaching activities by using the method of name-choosing with 井. First of all, teachers must design the name question into the curriculum activity. While I started from the question of “assuming Xu Shen’s opening of a bookstore and how to get its name”, the students collectively completed the kanji character on the blackboard. Furthermore, the questioning method is used to promote student thinking, and the teacher is to give students feedback on the knowledge of the Chinese characters, sounds, and meanings. Finally, the teacher will explain the origin and development of the word “彧” in the structure of shape, sound, and meaning. The Chinese character teaching method provided in this article is an innovative and effective learning that can promote the teacher-student interaction. If we can implement this method through the teacher education, we will have a refreshing experience in the dissemination of international character education!

인명용 한자는 가족관계등록법에 의거 등록 대상인 본명인 관명의 이름자에 사용할 수 있는 한자이다. 1991년 1월 1일 2,731자를 대법원에서 선정하여 최초 시행한 후 2-3년에 한 번씩 9차례 추가하여 2015년 1월 1일부터 8,142자가 되었다. 언론 보도를 보면 인명용 한자의 제한은 성명권 침해이므로 부적정하고, 범위는 확대해야 하며, 포함된 유의문자는 제외해야 된다는 논란이 시행과 더불어 계속되고 있다. 그러나 성명학계는 제한에 관심이 없고 유의문자에만 관심을 갖고 있어서 개선 의지가 약하다. 대법원은 어려운 한자가 불편하고 전산화에도 장애이며, 선정된 인명용 한자 8,142자가 작지도 않지만 확대 중이 라며 개선에 부정적이다. 또한 헌법재판소의 인명용 한자 합헌 결정에서 알 수 있듯이 제한을 없애는 것은 아직 시기도 성숙되지 않았다. 하지만 행정 편의를 위해서 성명권을 침해하고 국민의 불편을 야기하는 것은 문제가 있으므로 인명용 한자 제한과 범위 협소, 유의문자는 개선해야 한다. 종국적으로 모든 한자를 이름자로 사용할 수 있도록 성명권을 보장해야 하지만, 이에 부정적인 대법원의 견해도 적정하므로 다음 세 가지 사항을 단계별로 진행할 것을 제언한다. 첫째, 모든 관련자가 참여하여 인명용 한자의 정책 전반적인 개선을 다루는 대법원 소속의 위원회를 구성하여야 한다. 둘째, 인명용 한자에 포함된 유의문자를 제외하거나 최소한 인식할 수 있도록 공시해야 한다. 셋째, 충분한 검토와 논의로 논란을 예방하면서 범위를 추가 확대한 후, 종국적으로 인명용 한자의 제한을 없애야 한다.

Taboo is an ancient custom in China. The taboo system was applied to the names of emperors had a long history in China. Beginning from Zhou Dynasty, until to Qing Dynasty. It is true that taboo system has caused confusion of the recording of ancient Chinese books and inconvenience to the study of historical materials, but one will be able to apply its principle to appraise the authenticity of those books and materials of one has a good grasp of it. Taboo studies also have a long history. According to Chen Yuan’s陳垣 Shi hui ju li史諱舉例，there are different ways to avoid the forbidden words, such as change the character, blank character, omit a stroke, change the pronunciation, etc. This paper claimed that besides change the forbidden word to a synonym, other ways to achieve taboos were occurred in Han Dynasty, such as “missing one stroke of a Chinese character”, “change the formation of a Chinese character”, “change the shape of a Chinese character”, etc. That means the old conclusion of Chen Yuan and other scholars may be not true. However, philologists argued that those changes are the result of the variant form of a Chinese character異體字. Scholars stated that the way to avoid a tabooed word in Han dynasty was to change the forbidden word to a synonym. In this paper, according to Louji’s 婁機 Hanliziyuan漢隸字源, Hongkuo’s洪适 Lishi隸釋, Zhou Guangye’s周廣業 Jing shi bi ming hui kao經史避名彙考, we examine the relationship between tabooed character and variant form of a Chinese character. Finally, discuss the importance of variant form of a Chinese character in the aspect of taboo studies.

In China, a person’s name usually implies many different meaning. It develops in tandem with the advancement of human civilization. This paper is devoted to analyze the cultural implication of Chinese names. It concentrates on finding the cultural factors that influence people’ s naming process in different social and political settings. The paper provides some insight related to the naming conventions developed in recent years.

Seoul Metro has set up a principle of liberal translation on naming its stations that it will use thematic role in naming stations in Korean to reveal the origin of the place name and is abiding by the principle. Busan Humetro also applies the same principle. In the view that it can complement the broad principle of transliteration, the thematic role can be fully considered and used in parallel as well. Especially, when thematic role is used, the place name in Chinese characters should be considered first. Furthermore, accurate understanding on the origin of the place name should be sought. However, when looking at closely, there are mistakes in many cases, such as that, the existing Chinese character place names are not considered in thematic role, or the origin of place names are misunderstood, or Chinese characters are wrongly applied. In case of transliteration, there is no independent standard on writing Chinese characters for Korean pronunciation. Therefore, a definite implementation scheme which fully reflects ｢Template(英汉译音表)｣should be sought. Particularly, It should be considered that the common noun at the rear should be thematically translated or its original pronunciation be written as is. In common nouns at the rear which reveal the natural topography, there are many cases that the common nouns at the rear have lost the topographic informativity. Therefore, it would be appropriate to do transliteration for the whole place name in case the common noun at the rear does not contain the information of the relevant region. However, looking at the actual translation examples, the place names containing the old topographical information were thematically translated uniformly, for example, 나루(ferry)→渡口, 다리(bridge)→橋, 샛강(side river)→江, 내(stream)→川, 못(pond)→池, etc. In the cases that the station name contains the needed information, for example, 성당못(Catholic church pond)→聖堂池 in Daegu Subway, the thematic role is necessary, however, it should be noted that there is a possibility of conveying unnecessary information, like, 여의나루(Yeouinaru)→汝矣渡口. In contrast to this, for the cases of public offices or institutions, it is basically necessary to transfer into corresponding offices or institutions in China. Presently, it is written literally as 시청(city hall)→市厅 or 구청(borough office)→区厅, but a way to change this to 市政府, or 区政府 should be considered. It would also be proper to write 검찰청(Public Prosecutors’ Office) to 检察院, rather than 检察厅. In cases that the Chinese character writings are not commonly used, like 政府厅舍, It would be also appropraite to try to find words which are commonly used, like 政府办公大楼, rather than writing as 厅舍. However, for the institutions like 国会议事堂, which does not exist in China, should be treated as exceptions. It would be awkward to translate it into 人民大会堂 overly. Because their roles are completely different each other. On the other hand, in case of writing an English word place name into Chinese, it is necessary to judge whether it is a common noun or a proper noun. If it is a common noun, thematic role would be appropriate, and if it is a proper noun, transliteration should be done. The most problematic cases are when Chinese characters are written together while the English word place names are not translated; Centum City and Renecite Station fall under this category. For Centum City, translated words such as 仙登城 or 仙腾城, which have transliteration and thematic role together, could be suggested, and for Renecite, transliterations such as 日内西德 or 日内西特 could be suggested. In translating Chinese words, it is particularly important to have uniformity whether it is by transliteration or by thematic role. For the case of 버스터미널(bus terminal), it would be embarrasing to write differently, like, 巴士客运站, 高速客运站, 客运站, etc. It is necessary to unify into one expression of, for example, 汽车客运站, or something else. Sometimes 삼거리(three way intersection) is written differently as 三岔路口 and 丁字路口, and this should also be unified. Besides, there are cases where the possibility of transliteration was suggested, like, 골(valley)→谷尔, 고개(pass)→谷给, 바위(rock)→巴伊, or 내(inside)→內. In these cases where the common nouns at the rear appear frequently, it seems necessary to form a consensus to unify the transliteration.

This study examined the factors of place name changes in China from the perspective of sociolinguistics. The place name change factors were diachronically review by not differentiating their corresponding period from ancient time to modern times. Generally, China’s place naming has two principles – physical geographical factors, and human geographical factors. In this study, the human geographical factors were mainly looked at by dividing them further into political diplomatic factors and sociocultural factors. First of all, as for political diplomatic factors, the country has been through name changes during Cultural Revolution, due to ethnic minority policies and due to foreign relationship, military activity and migration. Secondly, sociocultural factor were found to be place name changes to avoid taboo language, to seek sophisticated naming, caused by contact with different peoples and due to historic and cultural preservation.