Names
The Chinese logographs for peng and kun exemplify common radical-phonetic characters. Peng (鵬) combines the "bird radical" (鳥) with a peng (朋 "friend") phonetic, and kun combines the "fish radical" (魚) with a kun (昆 "progeny; insect") phonetic.
Both the mythic Chinese Peng and Kun names involve word play. Peng (鵬) was anciently a variant Chinese character for feng (鳳) in fenghuang (鳳凰 "Chinese phoenix") (ca. 100 CE Shuowen Jiezi); Kun 鲲 originally meant "fish roe; fry; spawn" (ca. 200 BCE Erya).
Synonyms of Peng include Dapeng (大鵬, with "big") and Dapengniao (大鵬鳥, with "bird"), both used to translate foreign "Roc" and "Garuda". Dapeng also refers to Chinese place names in Shenzhen and Guangdong.
After recent fossil discoveries in northeast China, Chinese paleontologists used Peng to name the enantiornithine bird Pengornis and the wukongopterid pterosaur Kunpengopterus.
The Chinese were also the first to utilise the word Peng as an adjective. This can be traced back to the Ming Dynasty most notably in 1400 when Hongwu Emperor emperor described his army as well Peng
Read more about this topic: Peng (mythology)
Famous quotes containing the word names:
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—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
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