The Chinese love of word play: 01 (The husband stealer's name)

 

I’m watching a mainland Chinese series on YouTube at the moment.  The woman who’s the man’s bit on the side is called 胡莉 / Hú Lì.  I have a feeling that this name might’ve been invented as a word play.  

    Disclaimer:  It’s only my own theory, and this blog is only for a bit of linguistic fun.

    Let’s analyse the choice of characters and the combination of those two characters:

    胡 Hú is a common enough surname.  The two components are 古月 gǔ yuè / “ancient moon”.  Summary from my own understanding: there was an ancient non-Han Chinese tribe to the west (somewhere in the direction of Asia Minor, presumably modern-day Xinjiang kind of way) called the Moon Tribe, so 古月 gǔ yuè / “ancient moon” would refer to them and anything to do with their culture.

    Examples are: 

    胡琴 hú qín or 二胡 èr hú is a two-stringed non-Han Chinese musical instrument, held upright on the lap and played drawing a bow across the strings. 

    胡笳 hú jiā is a non-Han Chinese reed pipe.

    胡萝卜 hú luóbo / “non-Han-Chinese radish” is carrot, with the prefix of 胡 hú signifying that it didn’t come from China originally.

    胡椒 hú jiāo / “non-Han-Chinese pepper” is peppercorn, again identifiable as non-Han Chinese originally from the prefix 胡 hú.

    胡豆 hú dòu / “non-Han-Chinese bean” is broad bean (蚕豆 cán dòu / “silkworm bean”), again not from China originally (but S.W.Asia and N.Africa, according to Google).

    Now we come to the negative usage of 胡: anything that’s “not kosher” tends to get described as 胡, e.g.,

    胡说 hú shuō / “non-Han-Chinese to-speak” = to talk nonsense

    胡话 hú huà / “non-Han-Chinese word” = ravings (like when one’s delirious)

    So, the choice of the surname 胡 Hú for the man’s bit on the side who’d wrecked his marriage might not be totally innocent.

    Now, for her personal name of 莉 lì, which means “jasmine” (in full 茉莉花 mòlì huā / “jasmine jasmine flower”, or 茉莉 mòlì / “jasmine jasmine”).  

    Innocuous enough, you say.  

    Well, yes, innocuous enough on its own for a girl’s name, but combine it with her surname, and it becomes 胡莉 Hú Lì, which sounds like 狐狸 húli / fox.  

    The fox image in Chinese works very similarly to the English fox (crafty) and vixen (a sexually attractive woman more often up to no good than a neutral image).  There’re ancient Chinese stories about the fox spirit 狐狸精 húli jīng who lure men away from the proper path and sap their male yáng qì/vital energy.  In modern Chinese usage, a 狐狸精 húli jīng is used to describe a woman who steals another woman’s man.

    So, I’m pretty sure that the name of 胡莉 Hú Lì was not chosen in innocent ignorance of the connotations behind it from all the perspectives I’ve flagged up above.

    Just a bit of linguistic fun.

PS, 09 Feb ’25:  For some reason when I stumbled across this modern Chinese series, I was pitched straight into Episode 12.  (I’m not that unobservant; it was NOT labelled Episode 12, but 1.)  Not for the first time in a series, I must say, I don’t know why.  Maybe a particular episode was picked out and posted to attract the viewer.  It is, however, very confusing for me, thinking that I was watching the start of the story, with the background to be revealed later as flashbacks.  Anyway, this blog about the word play on the name of the husband stealer was written at that point of the story (Episode 12).  Once I discovered that there were earlier episodes, I searched and found the front, and yes, the word play is deliberate as one of the characters said something to the effect that she was appropriately named.  There’s another word play on a name in the same series, to come as another blog.