Anonymous. I can't give my real name. : The role of alias name.

　Many heroes who appeared in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

　Someone name is sometimes called Zhuge Liang or Zhuge Kongming.

　Zhuge is the family name and Liang is the given name. So what is Kongming?

　Kongming is a alias name. In Chaina, it was customary for people to be given this alias name when they reached adulthood.

　Nowadays, names are, in the extreme, merely identifiers.

　On the other hand, in ancient China, it was believed that the soul of the person resided in the name, and it was forbidden to speak it casually. Only those in higher positions than the person, such as rulers and parents could call the person by their name. It was considered rude for others to call out their real name.

　Using only the family name makes lift inconvenient as there are many people with the same family name.

　So instead of giving a name, they were given a alias name when they reached adulthood. Boys reach adulthood at age 20, and girls at age 15, when they are given a alias name.

　It began during the Shang Dynasty, also known as the Yin Dynast in the 17th century BC, and spread during the Zhou Dynasty in the 11th century BC.

　Therefore, in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, people who like Zhuge Liang call him Zhuge Kongming, while enemy generals call him Zhuge Liang with contempt.

　The custom of writing alias name was also introduced to Japan, where scholars of Chinese classics and Confucianism such as Sugawara no Michizane and Arai Hakuseki were fond of writing alias name, but it was not as common as in China.

　Instead, the custom of haikomei (Generation name) became widespread in Japan.

　The eldest son was called Taro and the second son was called Jiro. If the family name was Tanaka, they were called Tanaka Taro or Tanaka Jiro. Even so, there seem to be many people with the same name.

　The father and the child then make pairs based on the number of the boy.

　For example, if the father is the second son and the child is the eldest son, the child's name would be Tanaka Jirotaro. If both the father and the child are eldest sons, the child's name would be Kotaro (Little Taro) or Matataro (Dabble Taro).

　There is a wide variation, but it is possible to identify it at the level of those involved.

　In both Japan and China, people have avoided revealing their real names since ancient times.

　Conversely, telling someone your real name meant opening up to them.

　In ancient Japan, a woman revealing her real name was considered proof that she had accepted a marriage proposal, and the Anthology of Myriad Leaves contains many poems by young men asking a potential bride's real name.

　Women also hid their real names, so their real names are no longer recorded.

　The names Sei Shonagon and Murasaki Shikibu as everyone knows them, are lady names and not their real names.

　Historical documents show that Sei Shonagon was from the Kiyohara clan, and Murasaki Shikibu was from the Fujiwara clan.

　She was from the Kiyohara (another pronunciation: Sei) clan and had connections to a Shonagon (A minister-level official), so the most likely theory is that she was Sei Shonagon.

　The name Murasaki Shikibu is a little complicated. The name was chosen because of her connection to Lady Murasaki, the heroine of The Tale of Genji, and because she was associated with the Shikibu (the department in charge of court ceremonies and personnel affairs).

　Both Sei Shonagon and Murasaki Shikibu naturally had real names, but they were never recorded and remain an eternal mystery.

　While man's real names are generally recorded, women, even princesses and daughters of shoguns are not recorded and are simply described as someone's daughter.

　The author of the Heian period essay The Gossamer Years is recorded only as the mother of Fujiwara no Michituna; her real name is unknown.

　In the era of polygamy, many children were not even recorded.

　Even if you are born to an emperor or a Shogun, their name will not necessarily be reformed. Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon are great female writers whose court ladies have been engraved in history.