There are many ways of choosing or creating a name, the ways of which vary from culture to culture, and from language to language. Chinese onyms are usually constructed of one or more elements, being mostly lexical items (morphemes or words), and retaining in most cases their own lexical meaning in a name, therefore they are usually semantically transparent. However, the “true” significance of some names is sometimes very difficult to discover, and the conclusion is often based upon guesswork. What is evident, Chinese onyms are not random combinations; they usually have a certain underlying significance, reflecting the reason or reasons why particular lexical items are used in the naming process. Chinese researchers usually do not mention “the meaning” of names as a criterion for their semantic divisions. Their classifications are mainly based upon the variously termed “reasons”, “methods”, “motivations”, or “sources of naming”. Therefore, this paper deals with some selected, typical and untypical, “methods” of creating Chinese names, especially given names and place names.

The paper discusses the method of the substitution by homophones that is extensively used in many fields in China, among others onomastics, such as toponymy or anthroponymy. The Chinese language has always contained a considerable number of homophones, i.e. words pronounced alike but spelt/written differently and having different meanings. The situation resulted from two main factors: the nature of the Chinese language and the sound changes to spoken Chinese language, i.e. a strong tendency to sound simplification. The method of the substitution by homophones is mainly aimed at reshaping already existing names by replacing their previous form, for some reasons unwanted. However, it is also broadly applied to create new names by using words which are homophonic with the words denoting the idea they symbolize. The paper presents some various reasons and aims of the use of the method in the domain of Chinese geographical names, and the more detailed analysis of its use in the changing of old street (hutong) names after 1949 in Beijing. The research material consists of 1,159 hutong names, and the names changed by the use of the method accounts for 23.5% of the total.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the distinguished properties of by-names as forms different from official ones, to analyze their structural and semantic features and to search for their historical evidence. By-names of Chinese places should not be defined as unusual and informal, since actually in many cases by-names are formal and very common in China nowadays. By-names are generally bestowed on important places (mostly cities) that win the public interest. Most of them have two structural parts, the front specific parts are determiners / qualifiers and the back ones are generics. The generics generally are: cheng 城 ‘town / city’, du 都 ‘capital’, jiang 江 ‘river’, shan 山 ‘mountain’, dao 岛 ‘island’ etc. The lexical meanings of lexical items forming specific parts of by-names mainly refer to animals, plants, minerals, local manufactured products, climate and natural scenery, geographical location, humans, areas, etc. Chinese contemporary by-names, used on various occasions, vary in frequency and stability. The by-names discussed in the paper only account for a small proportion and are listed just due to their relatively high frequency, stability and acceptability.