The history of naming is an extremely interesting one that varies greatly from culture to culture. In some, surnames are important, in others, they are not even existent. In some, personal names are important, in some, less so.Let’s take the Chinese case. In ancient villages, children could be known as Old Number Three, or whichever happened to be their order among siblings. The higher classes, on the other hand, would have a surname (xing), a personal name (ming), an adult...
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is the Executive Director of Penang Institute. His latest book is Signals in the Noise: Notes on Penang, Malaysia and the World (Singapore: Faction Press) Homepage: wikibeng.com.