The surname stroke order () is a system for the
collation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fi ...
of
Chinese surname
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicization, Sinicized ethnic groups in Greater China, Korea, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Written Chinese names begin with surnames, ...
s. It arose as an impartial method of categorization of the order in which names appear in official documentation or in ceremonial procedure without any line of hierarchy. In official setting, the number of
stroke
Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...
s in a person's surname determines where a name should be placed and the list order. Surnames "
Ding" and "
Wang
Wang may refer to:
Names
* Wang (surname)
Wang () is the pinyin romanization of Chinese, romanization of the common Chinese surname (''Wáng''). It has a mixture of various origin with uncertain lineage of family history, however it is c ...
" (written simply in the Chinese language with two and four strokes, respectively, "丁", "王") for example, are simple surnames that usually appear on the front of lists, while surnames such as "
Dai" and "
Wei" ("戴", "魏", both written with 17 strokes) often appear on the bottom of lists.
If the first character is the same, then the names are ordered by the stroke on the second character. In some naming lists, names with two characters appear before names with three characters. In other naming lists, the second character takes precedence regardless of how many characters there are in total in the name. If there are equal number of strokes in a surname, they are then ordered by the order of the way strokes are formed, starting with the first stroke, with a horizontal stroke ordering first, then a vertical stroke, then a downwards right-to-left stroke, then a point, then a hook ().
Although this ordering method is widely used, its most prominent use is in the ordering of important official bodies, including the members of the
Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party
The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, officially the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is the Central committee, highest organ when the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, national congress is not ...
, the members of the
National People's Congress
The National People's Congress (NPC) is the highest organ of state power of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The NPC is the only branch of government in China, and per the principle of unified power, all state organs from the Sta ...
, and the members of the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is a political advisory body in the People's Republic of China and a central part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s United front (China), united front system. Its members adv ...
.
The ordering method is comparable to an
alphabetical order
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is ...
of names, but in Chinese this is impractical as
written Chinese
Written Chinese is a writing system that uses Chinese characters and other symbols to represent the Chinese languages. Chinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an alphabet or syllabograms in a syllabary. Rath ...
lacks an alphabetical structure, and the general populace does not rely on the
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
romanization, from which some order schemes have developed.
The
parade of nations at the 2008 Beijing Olympics used a similar ordering method.
See also
*
Chinese name
Chinese may refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China.
**'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethni ...
*
Radical-and-stroke sorting
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...
References
External links
An example of surname stroke order in the Communist Party's Central Committee membership list
{{DEFAULTSORT:Surname Stroke Order
Chinese character collation
*
Surname