Koei Wiki
Register
Advertisement

ChA style name, also called courtesy name (字, Chinese: ; Japanese: azana), is a name usually given to a man when he reaches twenty years of age. Style names are either given by the parents or chosen by the man later in life. Since the style name respects the owner's adulthood, it was used in place of their given name by people born in the same generation. Calling someone by their given name was considered rude if the speaker was the same age as the addressee. After a man had his style name, his given name was reserved for his elders and himself. Creating these names was a common practice in Imperial China and was not largely extended to other cultures.

Women sometimes obtained style names after they were married. Unlike men, however, their new names were kept privately for their husbands and were rarely written in historical records.

The practice of making style names have been fading since the New Culture Movement in China.

Creating Style Names[]

Style names are two syllables and two characters used after a surname, often based on a man's given name or order of birth. They can be an alternate interpretation or radical version of their given name, such as Zhuge Liang's "Kongming" (孔明), which means "great" or "open" and is the surname of Confucius. Another way to form a style name is to have the man's new name make a connection with their given name, like Zhao Yun's "child dragon" (子龍 Zilong).

Characters in this set: "Bo" (伯), "Meng" (孟), "Zhong" (仲), "Shu" (叔) and "Ji" (季) were used to denote the bearer's position in the order of birth among siblings: "Bo" (伯) for eldest son by the principal wife, "Meng" (孟) for eldest son by a concubine, "Zhong" (仲) for second son, "Shu" (叔) for third, and "Ji" (季) for fourth. For examples, Sun Jian's and Lady Wu's four sons, from eldest to youngest: Sun Ce, Sun Quan, Sun Yi, and Sun Kuang bore the style names Bofu (伯符), Zhongmou (仲謀), Shubi (叔弼), and Jizuo (季佐), respectively.

Of course, not all style names follow these traits. Style names may also exhibit no change in its construction from a man's given name. Scriptures may note a man's religious name as their sort of style name.

In the Games[]

In Koei's titles, style names are often used as a simple way of forming a bond between characters. It implies that the speaker highly respects the addressee. Here are a few general examples that appear in Koei's titles.

speaker → addressee
Liu BeiGuan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang
Cao CaoCao Pi, Cao Ren
Sun QuanZhou Tai

In the Dynasty Warriors series, characters use family and style names to express their integrity and determination. These proclamations are often used when a character challenges their competition. Style names are present in Asian scripts but omitted in English translations due to contextual issues.

Style names are more commonly used in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, though limited to very few characters. For example, in several titles Zhang Fei is almost exclusively referred to as "Yide" when Chinese voice sets are enabled within the game settings, while Zhou Yu often refers to Sun Ce as "Bofu". Cao Cao's style name "Mengde" appears repeatedly throughout the series in the context of referencing a war manual that Cao Cao authored, but is never actually used in conversation. Within English translations style names are never subtitled when spoken, instead using each character's given name whenever their style name is spoken.

Advertisement