#pspspspspsp come off anon so we can be hyper obsessed freaks Together

[qourmet]

hello, hope you’re doing well :D! i’ve been obsessing over all of your art and hcs of the mdzs older gen and i was wondering what your thought process of the names you chose for them were because they’re really cool!! like i was thinking how yixi’s name is probably referencing that she came from tibet or how qhj’s courtesy name is maybe referencing his position as heir then later sect leader, like him inheriting the responsibility of leading the lan clan, and maybe the night character is in reference to his quiet personality but also his future loneliness in seclusion? or maybe im just looking into it too deeply (Ｔ▽Ｔ)

hello hello!! i've been very busy, this new years is starting off with lots of farewells on my end & promises to see friends as they settle in to their lives, i hope you are well & i hope you've had a good holiday & will have a good year.

WAH you're too sweet 😭 i'm gonna be honest, a Lot of my thought process when Naming characters in general has been:

• "follow the naming process of mxtx," which means you can bet your butt i've been Carding through Tang Dynasty poetry for Months • making Absolute Sure that None of the names i settle on are homonyms for anything with a double-meaning such as: modern swear words, innuendos, or just anything in general that would make them look like a clown • do NOT be Airplane (Shang Qinghua) when naming characters- which in essence if you haven't read svsss means do Not give characters names that spell out the core of their origins. no "risen from the frozen river" names, "don't be too on-the-nose i'm Begging you do research" @ me • do your absolute Best not to choose characters with a ridiculous amount of strokes Especially for given names (a rule i've struggled to actually live by) • do your Best to not have too many overlapping characters that Canon names use • sparingly looking at the tao te ching because i'm too scared of being culturally insensitive to nitpick a name from any pinyin i might come across

i won't claim ever to be a native chinese speaker: i have enjoyed the incentive to learn characters that are the building blocks to actual words that reading mxtx's works (& subsequently other cnovels) have given me, but it is not a culture i was raised in and it is not a language i read fluently. can't speak mandarin or cantonese or suzhounese or any other dialect and have been blessed with multiple friends who do and have done their best to help steer me in the right direction. all that being said, here's some dumb facts with the names:

• regarding the last-most point, i've picked ONE name from the tao te ching. i'm glad you enjoy Chengye/承夜's name but i've deliberated over it too long and have come to the conclusion that it Will be changed. taking inspiration from qiren's name, there needs to be a verb in there paired with something abstract but innately Human & i've found a passage in the tao that i Really liked that i feel alluded to my own characterization of him had the phrase Yǒuqíng/有情 which is Just as abstract and ridiculous as Chengye (which i cannot remember where i pulled that name from), but comes with the added bonus of being from the Adjustment of Controversies. to Have affections but understand where they should be going or how they should be distributed, to question why a person favors One thing over Another despite the inevitable conclusion that All of it is working towards an inevitability completely out of a person's control, it all feels just absolutely peachy to thrust that onto qingheng-jun when he couldn't in his lifetime maintain the favor between his family & his wife. plus Wangji's name being tao-derrivative made me feel i needed at least one of the prev gen in this boat with their successors. i've studied the tao in a scholarly setting Once for a semester, and Once more for a week or two on my own time so Please do Not take my word as any level of expertise i'm begging you. • I Do remember when picking out a name for Qingheng-jun, coming across a name that in essence meant "Bear the Night" felt a little too on-the-nose. there was no double meaning though i tried applying one. he's a Leader, he's a Cultivator, it's Expected of him to bear this and bear it as if it weren't a burden. and the more i thought/think about it, the less it made sense especially when All cultivators are expected to soldier through the same conditions, yanno? • Cangse-Sanren is the only girl i've headcanon'd so-far with a courtesy name! and i Really Really wanted it to be something to do with celestial bodies Exclusively because Xiao Xingchen has the Most celestial name on this show outside of Lan Xichen but he doesn't count in my head. i also wanted it to have Anything to do with the moon because Xiao Xingchen's name has a good chunk of sun radicals in there, but also Moonbeam is what you'd call a fairy and she's a fairy and i Will Never let that go. the most buckwild batshit fairy you've ever met but a mortal worthy of being a celestial being. her Surname means Wish, so go wishing on the moonbeams because her husband certainly did. • Cangse-Sanren in my headcanons named herself. She was a whimsical child, she named herself something outlandish for her surname, & she was obsessed with the cowherd & weavergirl story as a child so she named herself Liu/浏 with the milky way in mind (here i go breaking my Not Too Many Strokes rule). • tragically Yixi's name was more utilitarian than anything else. i needed something that worked in multiple languages based on my headcanons of origin & with the limited selection i had to work with, 益西 was by & far my favorite. plus the implications of her having value, of being benificial to some far-off location that was as far away from Gusu as you could possibly get, how could i Not see the poetry in that? • Yixi has no surname. Yi is not her surname, her full name is Yixi. where i headcanon her From, surnames weren't particularly commonplace outside of nobility and i don't headcanon her family to be of major importance (though i believe they're relatively self-sustaining). She might be associated with a specific clan her family works under or for & that may come up in the future, but for now it's just Yixi until or unless you think of her as already a married Lan. jury's out on whether the Lan clan would've ever called her Madam Lan tho. • confession: Bu Xin's name was directly inspired by Unchained Love's Bu Xin. different spelling but iirc it's completely a homonym. second confession: i have yet to finish watching Unchained Love please go Easy on me