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guzhuangheaven · 3 years

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Hello! I've seen many posts here on traditional clothing, but also on other topics, so I hope this is an appropriate question to ask. Could you please explain about different diminutives and terms of endearment in Chinese, like Xiao- (小), A-/Ah- (阿), -Er (兒), Lao (老), Lang (郎), and -Ge/-Jie/-Di/-Mei (哥/姐/弟/妹) (between non-biological relatives)? When would you use these, what is the difference between them and why would you use one over another, and how do you know which part of the name to pair?

The easy bit to tackle is the ge/jie/di/mei which when used socially are just an indicator of your relative age to the person you are addressing. So you would call a social acquaintance/friend who is slightly older than you ge/xiong or jie, and someone slightly younger than you di or mei. Ge/xiong and jie can also be used for someone around the same age as you as a sign of respect. I would say these honorifics imply a more informal relationship, but it is not such a close relationship that allows a more intimate diminutive or nickname like Lao X. If on an English-speaking scale of formality between calling someone Mr/Miss X, their name, or calling them dude or bro or some other affectionate insulting nickname, you’re somewhere in the middle. It’s basically the equivalent to being on a first name basis with someone, it’s just that the cultural values requires an honorific like ge/jie/di/mei to clarify the social relationship.

Regarding other terms like xiao/ah/er/lao/lang, it’s important to be aware that there are no hard set rules about how to use any of them. Most of the time diminutives of names evolve organically through social interactions. There isn’t any rule that X name has to be paired with xiao or er, any more than there are rules that a person named Robert can only be nicknamed Rob instead of Bob or whatever. Whether you’re called Rob or Bob or Bobby, or whether only your mum calls you Bobby and everyone else calls you Rob, entirely depends on whatever arbitrary reason you chose that name as your preferred name or what those around you decided to call you.

That said, of course there are certain connotations to be read when certain diminutives are used in certain contexts.

Diminutives like xiao and er are often given to children by older generations of their family, and can stick around until adulthood. If you’re a man, and unless your name is actually Xiao X, if you are still called xiao and er into adulthood, this is likely because these diminutives were childhood nicknames that stuck around, and would only be used by those very close to you anyway. An example of this is in Nirvana in Fire, where you have people from Lin Shu’s childhood calling him Xiao Shu because that was his family nickname when he was young. It’s probably also meant to emphasise that Lin Shu as an identity is perpetually stuck at age 19. In any case, cute diminutives like xiao and er may be used for a grown man by members from older generations of his family such as parents or grandparents, but would unlikely be used between peers or those from the same generation. Between peers, grown men would be more likely to use each other’s courtesy names rather than diminutives.

Xiao and er can be more often used between those of the same generation/peers as diminutives for women but even then, it often also implies a close relationship. Of course, I would say the spectrum of formality for addressing women is a lot narrower than men, as historically women would have more limited avenues of social interaction. You’re probably working with two extremes of “very formal title” and “intimate nickname/diminutive” with very little in between. Between two women, it’s probably easier to move into using the intimate nickname. But for a man to address a woman he is unrelated to with a diminutive such as xiao and er would probably imply they have either known each other all their lives or otherwise have a very intimate relationship. The exception would only be if everyone called her by those diminutives and there’s no other more formal option.

Ah is usually used to tack on to the given name of people who have a one-character given name, and you don’t want to call them by their full surname + given name, because that would be too formal. It can be used as a diminutive for people who have two-character given names as well, but I think that’s less usual.

I would equate lao to something like the modern English dude or bro, in that it has that back-slapping male vibe to it. As a nickname, it certainly is more often used between men and paired with the surname or the numbering position you hold within your family.

(Not to be confused with lao when used as a term of respect for older people, which is another story.)

Lang is an interesting one, because it can be very social or very intimate depending on the context. I personally tend to associate lang with a certain period around the Tang and Song dynasties, though I’m sure it was used in other times as well. Lang can be paired with your surname and/or your numbering within the family and used by people when talking about you or to you, simply to denote that you are a male member of that family. So for example, in The Story of Ming Lan, Gu Ting Ye is often referred to socially as Gu Er Lang, which basically is just a way to indicate that the person is referring to the second son of the Gu family without saying his full name (which is rude) or calling him by some more formal title (which might sound stuffy in a close social context and/or not quite appropriate if the person talking is a social/generational superior). So there’s nothing special about someone like the emperor or Gu Ting Ye’s stepmother calling him Er Lang, because it’s just a mode of address. But at the same time, there’s a whole plot point of Gu Ting Ye trying to get Ming Lan to call him Er Lang after they are married, because between a couple, lang is a much more intimate term of endearment.

In terms which part of the name you would pair with any/all of these pre/suffixes, that also highly depends on your name. If you share a generational name with your brothers/sisters/cousins, usually your diminutive would most likely be paired with the other name that is unique to you. Alternatively, some people’s diminutive name might derive from the first character of their given name, others might be from the second character, simply because whichever character it is flows better with the diminutive term, or because it’s just randomly chosen. Since if you have a two-character name, both are your names it doesn’t really matter which you turn into a diminutive.

These are just some points that come to mind, but again, these terms can be extremely fluid, so there are no rules about how they must be used, which also means that their usage is often open to interpretation. A term of endearment might also become special because only X person uses it, not because the name per se is special. If everyone calls you Tonks and there’s that one person who’s allowed to call you Dora then obviously you have a different relationship with that person. -H

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