Chinese Character Names
The Chinese character used for the Zhuang people has changed several times. Their autonym, "Cuengh" in Standard Zhuang, was originally written with the rare character Zhuàng 獞 (or tóng, meaning "a variety of wild dog").). Chinese characters typically combine a semantic element or radical and a phonetic element. John DeFrancis calls Zhuàng 獞, with the "dog radical" 犭 and a tóng 童 phonetic, an ethnic slur and describes how the People's Republic of China removed it. In 1949, after the Chinese civil war, the logograph 獞 was officially replaced with Zhuàng 僮 (or tóng "child; boy servant"), with the "human radical" 亻and the same phonetic. Later, during the standardization of simplified Chinese characters, Zhuàng 僮 was changed to a completely different character Zhuàng 壮 (meaning "strong; robust").
Read more about this topic: Zhuang People
Famous quotes containing the words character and/or names:
“The truth and regularity of a character is not, in justice, to be looked upon as broken, from any one single act or omission which may seem a contradiction to it:Mthe best of men appear sometimes to be strange compounds of contradictory qualities.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)