Posthumous name

A posthumous name (Traditional Chinese: ??/?? Simplified Chinese: ??; Pinyin: shì hào; Romaji Japanese: shig?/tsuig?; Revised Romanization of Korean: siho; Vietnamese: th?y hi?u) is a honorary name given to royalty in some cultures posthumously, that is, after the person's death. The posthumous name is commonly used when naming most Chinese royalty, most Korean royalty, almost all Vietnamese royalty and all the emperors of Japan, except the four most recent emperors, Akihito, Hirohito (the Sh?wa emperor), the Taish? emperor and the Meiji emperor. Posthumous names in China and Vietnam were given to honor lifetime accomplishment: many people who were not related to the emperor have posthumous names. An example is Sun Yat-Sen who is called Father of the Country (?? Guófù).

History

Having their origins in the Chinese Zhou Dynasty, posthumous names were used 800 years earlier than temple names. The first person named posthumously was Ji Chun (??), named by his son Ji Fa (??) of Zhou, as the "Civil King" (??). The use of posthumous names was stopped in the Qin Dynasty, because Qin Shi Huang proclaimed that it is disrespectful for the descendants, or "later emperors" (???) to judge their elders, or the "prior emperors" (??). The practice was revived in the Han Dynasty after the demise of the Qin Empire.

Related Topics:
Zhou Dynasty - Temple name - Qin Dynasty - Qin Shi Huang - Han Dynasty

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