This is such a big subject that this blog can only hope to cover one tiny section of the tip of the iceberg. It is also my personal and a light-hearted take on the topic, not a scholastic one.
One of the criteria Chinese parents use for selecting names for their children is based on what the Chinese almanac says about the child's future, using the child's astrological details (year, month, day and hour of birth) called the 八字 bā zì / Eight Characters. This is my simplistic explanation of a complex system.
The 八字 bā zì of a particular child might say that his time of birth means that he is short of water in his life, so characters written with some element of water would be chosen for his name, e.g., 海 hǎi / sea; 江 jiāng / (bigger) river; 河 hé / (smaller) river. (It's almost always the boy's name that would be worthy of consideration / more important to get right, as girls would be dependent on their husbands for their future livelihood, therefore no need for them to carve out any brilliant future path for themselves.)
Another criterion is based on the parents' wishful thinking, a bit like praying to the gods with the child's name repeated so many times that their wish might get heard and therefore granted. The most common ones that I can think of are names with 强 qiáng / strong for boys and 秀 xiù / elegant/elegance for girls.
A couple of decades ago, a friend gave my name to an agency for interpreting at medical appointments. I always used the waiting time to talk to the patient, firstly to break the ice but more so, to save the doctor time by extracting the medical details before the patient actually went in, e.g., what his/her condition was, how bad it was, etc. This also gave me a bit of time to get used to the accent a little, as well as think about how to translate the symptoms if they were not the run-of-the-mill ones.
On one particular occasion, the patient was male with the name of 招男 zhāo nán / "beckon-to male", which was an unusual name (in my experience, anyway). I asked, "Were your parents hoping for another boy?" One guess for what the answer was. And did they go on to produce another boy after him? I can't remember now what he said.
A historical name that would be strong evidence against this wishful-thinking way of doing things is 霍去病 Huò Qù Bìng (霍 Huò is the surname).
A note here:
* Chinese surnames, being clan/family names and therefore higher in status/rank than personal names, come first in the string, under the Rule of Hierarchy. They are just clan/family names passed on down the generations, with the descendants not having a say in the choice of them. They are not to be translated, even if they do mean something on their own, e.g., surnames 马 mǎ / "horse" or 李 lǐ / "plum" remain Ma or Li, one doesn't call Mr Ma "Mr Horse" or Miss Li "Miss Plum".
* Chinese personal names are often chosen for their good meanings (e.g., "brave", "clever", "wise" [almost always for boys by cultural default]), with these qualities immediately popping up in the head of the person who comes across (or calls out) names with those characters. So, a man with the characters of 國強 (/ 国强) / "nation strong" in his name would be called verbally Guó Qiáng with the qualities automatically invoked with the sounds.
The characters 去病 Qù Bìng in the personal name of 霍去病 Huò Qù Bìng mean "to-do-away-with illness". It is an unusual combination of characters for a personal name and one cannot always account for the logic behind parents' choice of characters for their children's names, but I'd hazard a guess that they were hoping to have the boy grow up fit and healthy.
霍去病 Huò Qù Bìng was certainly not lacking in bravery and military prowess. He was a famous general who fought against the Xiongnu (匈奴 / Huns) during the reign of Emperor Wu (漢武帝 / 汉武帝, 156 – 87 BC) of the Western Han Dynasty (西漢 / 西汉, 206 BC – 9 AD).
His dates? 140 – 117 BC. So, he lived for only 23 years.
The cause of death? Illness. (That's what the historical records say.)
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