What are courtesy names in Chinese novels?

You're three chapters into a historical or cultivation novel and a character you know by one name is suddenly being called something else, by someone who clearly likes him. Nobody in the book is confused. You are. Courtesy names in Chinese novels are one of the first things that make a new reader feel like they missed a page.

What courtesy names in Chinese novels are

A courtesy name (字, zì) is a second given name taken in adulthood, traditionally at twenty for men, sometimes at marriage for women. A person keeps their surname and their birth name (名, míng), and adds the courtesy name on top. So a character born Lin Yue might take the courtesy name Qingfeng and be Lin Qingfeng to most of the world. The two names are usually related in meaning, an echo or a complement, chosen by a parent or teacher. It was a real custom for most of Chinese history, and the novels set in those worlds use it the way it was used.

Who calls you what

This is the part that carries feeling. The birth name is intimate or superior: parents use it, teachers use it, an emperor uses it, and so does anyone trying to insult you by pretending to be your elder. The courtesy name is the polite public name: friends, colleagues, rivals, and strangers who want to be respectful. Using someone's birth name when you have no right to it is a small act of aggression. Using their courtesy name when you used to use the birth name is a small act of distance. Writers play these against each other constantly, and a whole relationship can turn on which name gets said in a doorway.

On top of the two names sit titles and nicknames: a sect title, a sobriquet in the martial world, a family rank like second young master. A major character can carry four or five labels, and Chinese readers sort them without effort because each label tells you who is speaking.

How translators handle it

The simplest choice is to keep everything: birth name, courtesy name, titles, all transliterated, with a glossary at the front. This is what most fan translations and the licensed danmei editions do. It preserves every shade of meaning. It also means the reader has to memorize that two names are one person, and in a book with a large cast the memorizing never quite stops.

Or you pick one name per character and use it everywhere, usually the one the narration uses. The story becomes far easier to follow, and the cost is invisible until a scene depends on the switch: a friend finally using the birth name, an enemy sneering with it, a master refusing to grant the courtesy name at all. Those scenes go flat.

A rarer option is to translate the courtesy name's meaning rather than its sound. It can be lovely, and it can also give you a court full of people called things like Clear Wind and Bright Jade, which most readers find harder to hold than the pinyin.

What we'd choose

Keep both names, and be relentless about consistency. The system only works if the same character is always the same two strings and the reader can learn them once. What ruins courtesy names in translation is drift: a name spelled two ways, a courtesy name used by the narration in one chapter and the birth name in the next for no reason in the original. Invented example: if a character's teacher calls him Yue and his friends call him Qingfeng, the reader should be able to feel, by chapter twenty, that a stranger saying "Yue" has crossed a line.

How to read it comfortably

Assume every new name in the first fifty chapters might belong to someone you already know, and listen to who is saying it. Who's saying it tells you the relationship, and that usually tells you which name it is.

For a translation that keeps every character's names the same from the first chapter to the last, which is most of the battle, read it in Crossleaf.