Talk:Ziying

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[edit] Family Relations

The Chinese Wikipedia offers three theories to Ziying's Family relation with Qin Shihuang, yet it is not present here. Should we translate from there?

[edit] Family name

Hardouin, again, I heavily disagree on the removal of the family name. The family name was not used the same way that we do now -- but if you do that, you might as well remove "Xiang" from "Xiang Yu" and "Liu" from "Liu Bang." Please try to come up with some convincing arguments otherwise. --Nlu 00:54, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Just to add an additional thought: "Elizabeth I" would be an anachronism by your standard, since she would never have been referred to by anything other than Queen Elizabeth or Elizabeth R. during her reign (and as Lady Elizabeth or Princess Elizabeth before her reign). In fact, it wouldn't be until the 20th century that she would ever be referred to as Elizabeth I, and yet we use Elizabeth I as a "modern convention." I don't see how using the Qin royal family's family name is any different. Are you proposing that the article Elizabeth I be moved to Elizabeth, R. or Elizabeth Tudor? --Nlu 16:59, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Elizabeth I was referred to as Elizabeth I ever since the 16th century! This is absolutely not a modern convention. Please refrain from talking about subjects you seem not very familiar with. As for the Chinese case, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu were commoners, and their family names were used with their given names. I believe by 210BC family names were starting to be commonly used in China, and if you check the Historical Records (史记) by Sima Qian, he refers to them as "Liu Bang" and "Xiang Yu". On the other hand, the royal family of Qin were not commoners, and their family name (ancestral name, 姓) was never used. You can check the Historical Records of Sima Qian, he never writes "Ying Ziying", he always writes "Ziying" only. It is a modern anachronism to write "Ying Ziying". It would be like writing "Louis Bourbon" instead of writing "Louis XIV". Hardouin 11:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Please provide a citation that she was referred to as Elizabeth I since the 16th century. She has, as far as I know, always simply been referred to as Queen Elizabeth (again, the ordinal would be unnecessary until there was a second one; certainly you never see Queen Anne referred to as Anne I). But a reason why he would never write "Ying Ziying" was simple; the convention of the time in histories is to mention the family name once and then not to mention it again for the rest of the same chapter. (The same thing happens all the time in later histories when the use of family names is indisputable.) There was not a single reference in Liu Muzhi (of the Southern Song Dynasty)'s biography to his descendants' family name (see [1]) after Liu Muzhi himself was introduced with that family name, for example. To be frank, I think you're grasping at straws here. Certainly this is a modern encyclopedia in any case. --Nlu 12:57, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

The name 嬴嬰 is not found in the Shiji, and it is not found in the Hanshu (汉书) either. It is simply not correct to write 嬴嬰. The Shiji and the Hanshu only refers to 子嬰. Hardouin 01:09, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

That doesn't make it not his name. Again, the Shiji only gave a family name at the start of a book. Once the book starts, as long as you are still talking about the same family, you don't use the family name. See, for example, the biography of Gongsun Hong (公孫弘) (ch. 112 overall, ch. 52 of biographies), which, when discussing his son Gongsun Du (公孫度), used this line:

元狩二年，弘病，竟以丞相終。 子度嗣為平津侯。 度為山陽太守十餘歲，坐法失侯。"

That was all Sima Qian had to say about Gongsun Du -- and not a single reference to him as "Gongsun Du" -- and yet it would be patently ridiculous for you or anyone else to assert that because "Gongsun" was not used here, that Gongsun Du should just be referred to as "Du." --Nlu 03:09, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Just check the Chinese Wikipedia and the Japanese Wikipedia, you'll see that none of them use the name 嬴嬰. I don't understand your insistance in using names that historians don't use. Check the Cambridge History of China also. Hardouin 12:54, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

So why do we use "Ying Zheng" (which is fairly universally used) but not "Ying Ying"? I equally don't understand your insistence on not using a family name for this person. And I note that you've switched from a substantive argument to a pure appeal to authority. --Nlu 16:45, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

We don't use family names because family names were not used for royalties back then. Can you please check the Cambridge History of China if you are not convinced, and stop reverting just because you thihk you know better. Thank you. Hardouin 17:13, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I think I've already made my objection to that point clear; Elizabeth I wasn't referred to as Elizabeth I in her days, either; that doesn't make her not Elizabeth I. If you're going to be consistent about this, you also have to remove all references to "Ying Zheng" from all versions of Wikipedia (including the Chinese and Japanese, which you've cited to but both of which use "Ying Zheng" in multiple articles). I am not only not convinced, but I am convinced that your line of reasoning is flawed and inherently internally inconsistent. I will not revert right now, but I do plan to revert again when I have the time and simultaneously file a RfC. Will you agree to abide by the majority? --Nlu 17:24, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to discuss this with you, because you simply don't listen to anything that is different from what you believe. I studied Chinese history for many years, and I can tell you that the naming convention in academic and historical circles is Ziying (子嬰), not Ying Ying (嬴嬰). Again check the Cambridge History of China if you don't believe me. You can also check some Chinese or Japanese historical dictionaries. And if you still don't believe me, you can also try a search on Google. A quick search on the Chinese Google, limiting answers to Chinese webpages, showed that the search "秦王" and "子婴" returned 787 hits, while the search "秦王" and "赢婴" returned only 48 hits. "秦二世" and "胡亥" returned 14,700 hits, while "秦二世" and "赢胡亥" returned only 197 hits. If this is not enough to convince you, then nothing will, and I am just wasting my time trying to argue this with you. Hardouin 20:21, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't get into this "I've studied Chinese history for many years so I must be right" argument with me. (I've also studied Chinese history for many, many years -- but it's not the amount of studying but the logic of the argument that should carry the day.) Again, it's inconsistent to omit the family name -- and there is a very natural reason why hits don't come with "贏胡亥" -- the usage of the Shiji omits the family name after the initial reference, and the vast majority of those hits are going to be citations of Shiji passages. It would be like arguing that Bill Clinton is not Bill Clinton but just "Clinton" because Web searches would yield far, far more hits for "Clinton" than "Bill Clinton." --Nlu 22:55, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

RfC has been filed. I won't revert, for the time being; wanting to hear from the peanut gallery first. --Nlu 23:00, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

You always find new arguments. Looking at your latest argument, Google returned 90,500,000 hits for Clinton, and 19,800,000 hits for "Bill Clinton". That's a difference of 1 to 4.5, whereas in the case of "秦二世"/"胡亥" and "秦二世"/"赢胡亥" there's a difference of 1 to 74.6! Hardouin 13:00, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Since you don't believe anything I say, I made a research at the universty library to retrieve usuage among historical and academic circles. First I took the famous Cambridge History of China, Volume I: The Ch'in and Hand Empires (221 B.C. - A.B. 220). In this book, Ziying is refered ONLY as Tzu-ying. There is no reference to Ying Ying (赢婴). And if I check what they say about the First Emperor, I find this paragraph which I copy entirely:

"The man who became known to history as the First August Emperor of Ch'in (Ch'in Shih-huang-ti; commonly abbreviated to Ch'in Shih-huang or the First Ch'in Emperor) was born in 259. His personal name of Cheng (Correct of Upright) was probably given to him because he was born in the first lunar month, which is commonly known in Chinese as the cheng or "correct" month."

As you can notice, they don't say "his personal name of Ying Cheng", they say his personal name is Cheng, period. Nowhere in the Cambridge History of China you find the name "Ying Cheng". It's simply because they respect the usage of China at the time.
Next I took the 二十六史大辞典 published by 吉林人民出版社 in 1993, in four volumes, and inside the 人物卷 I found an entry for "公子婴" with biography. There is no entry for "赢婴", and nowhere they use the name "赢婴". There is an entry for "秦始皇", but there is no entry for "赢政", and nowhere they use the name "赢政" for the First Emperor. Compare this with 汉武帝: they have an entry for "汉武帝" with his biography, and there is also another entry which reads like this: "刘彻: 见汉武帝条". So here it is quite clear that the family name is used with the given name. But in the case of the Qin rulers, the family name is never used with the given name, and that's why we don't find any entry "赢政: 见秦始皇条".
Next I took the 汉语大词典 published in Shanghai by the 汉语大词典出版社 in 1991, in 12 massive volumes. Here they don't have biographies of historical characters, but I found this interesting entry:

"秦二代: 秦二世皇帝胡亥。唐代避李世民讳，故二世称二代。唐白居易《决壅蔽》“音秦二代好佞，赵高饰谄谀之言以壅之。” "

As you can see, they refer to Qin Er Shi as "Huhai", they don't refer to him as "Ying Huhai". Whereas when it is Tang Taizong, they refer to him as "Li Shimin", they don't say "Shimin" only. Again that shows that the family name of Qin royalty is not used with their given name, unlike for later periods such as during the Tang.
Then finally I took the 中國人名大辭典 published by 商務印書館 in 1921. I found the following entry (I copy only the beginning):

"子嬰: 秦始皇太子扶蘇之子。[...]"

Again they don't use family name either. And there is no entry for 赢婴.
Now if that's not enough to convince you, I don't think anything will. Hardouin 23:48, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

All right, I speak Chinese and have studied Chinese history fairly extensively. "Ying" is rarely, if ever, used in Chinese when spoken in context with Ziying. Ziying is the most common name and I do not believe that the inclusion of Ying ying is necessary here. A mention of the family name can possibly be included. Olorin28 04:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to confirm what I was saying. Hardouin 00:48, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Whether he was "handed over" by Liu Bang

I don't think that "handed over" is justified; no traditional historical account has him as "handed over," and it would be sheer speculation to write that. (See Shi Ji's account at [2]. It stated simply that Xiang Yu killed him; it said nothing about Liu Bang handing him over.) --Nlu 13:13, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Check the Book of Han (汉书) where this is accounted in fuller details. All historians agree that he was handed over. Check the Cambridge History of China were this is explained. Liu Bang had promised Zijing that he wouldn't be mistreated, but due to the insistance of Xiangyu he had to relinquish Zijing to Xiangyu who killed him. Hardouin 01:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)