[ANON POST] Addressing members of Imperial family in (roughly) Han-era China.

[kutsuwamushi]

I've been able to find scads of information about how one was expected to address the Emperor himself (particularly servants), but very little information on how his children, the Empress Consort and military generals might address him in conversation (although I have assumed thus far that military generals would likely address him in much the same

Comments

[dontbeafraid234]

Sorry. I'm a writer myself and I have not a clue. However if you're writing non-fiction it's a different story but if its fictional it is always fun to improvise and make up something that gets your readers to thinking especially with royalty. Also wikipedia is not the best tool for information only because anyone can write about anything and it could be wrong. Although here could be plenty that know and write. Did you try looking into some sort of chinese site that focuses on somewhat of the emporer? soryy if this doesnt help but just thought that I should say something....

[spicetones]

There was a study done on Wikipedia reliability. Most of the hard academic information (sciences, history, etc) is fairly reliable, as it is also in my own experience, while anything pertaining to pop culture is obviously not so much.

[lied_ohne_worte]

I find that generally a good way of estimating the reliability of an article is to check how many different people have been editing it, how often it has been edited, and how active the talk page is/how reliable the editors look on there/what the contended issues are. And of course, the source section is often the most valuable part of an article.

[earthlingmike]

I trust Wikipedia more than anything else. Few other sources of information get checked as thoroughly as Wikipedia.

[spicetones]

In most of the period dramas I've seen in Hong Kong, most members of the royal family are referred to by their titles, i.e.,
太子 / taai3 zi2 / tai4 zi3 / (crown) prince;
公主 / gung1 zyu2 / gong1 zhu3 / princess;
王后 / wong4 hau6 / wang2 hou4 / queen;

whether in addressing them directly or two people speaking about royalty. Royal children would be named in order of birth, e.g. 三公主 / princess three, i.e. the third princess. Granted, media portrayals may be inaccurate, so if you want more detail, the Wikipedia article on Chinese honorifics is probably the place to look.

[spicetones]

P.S. Or the article on Chinese nobility.

P.P.S. First romanization after the characters is Cantonese, the second one is Mandarin.

[dontbeafraid234]

interesting information! XD

[nachtebuch]

皇阿玛 (huang2 a ma3) is a term that is only used in the Qing Dynasty by the Manchurian royal family since it is, after all, derived from the Manchurian language. Earlier dynasties, at least according to period dramas, use 父皇 (fu4 huang2), which literally means 'father-royal'.

As for pre-Qing royal families, royal offspring (heh) appear to have called their mothers 母后 (mu3 hou4), but only if she was officially the empress. If she wasn't, then they only got to call her 娘 or 娘亲 (niang2; niang2 qin1).

[nachtebuch]

I did a bit of Googling in Chinese and found a couple of random forum and blog posts about the matter. Unfortunately, I'm not certain our written material is entirely clear about earlier periods like the Han Dynasty, but it could also be the case that the Internet is far outdated in that respect. I managed to find this post here but it appears to be specific to the Song Dynasty.

I've been able to find scads of information about how one was expected to address the Emperor himself (particularly servants), but very little information on how his children, the Empress Consort and military generals might address him in conversation (although I have assumed thus far that military generals would likely address him in much the same way that a servant might. Please correct me if I'm wrong), as well as how someone might respectfully (and disrespectfully) mention him to a third party.According to the post, the Emperor's children did indeed call him 父皇 (fu4 huang2) as I mentioned in the comment above, but that this was in fact only the case in

[nachtebuch]

Correction about the son: I would surmise that respectfully, those outside of the immediate family would probably have referred to him as 皇太子 (huang2 tai4 zi3).

[nachtebuch]

This is all super-helpful truly, and I thank you very much for it! I cannot read Chinese nearly so well as I would like (though I am learning) and was very afraid to try searching terms in it for fear of doing it very, very wrong.

For ease of note-taking for myself and note-giving to proofers and writing circles, what would the English equivalents of these be?

For example, I know that bi4xia4 is styled in English as "Your Imperial Majesty," but is there something I can use for the others? Would the children just have addressed their siblings as "Second Brother," "First Sister," and so on?

[nachtebuch]

To be honest, I don't think there is an official translation for these terms, and 'Your Majesty' would probably do as well as 'Your Imperial Majesty', which IMHO is a bit much. And yes, Second Brother would be what I meant and the same would apply for sisters; among sisters the younger ones would have been called by name by their older siblings (and their parents) outside of formal situations, so that would depend on how you are naming them.

The Empress Consort, then, would simply be addressed as 'Mother' by their children. The same would apply for concubines; in this case, I do not think it is possible to express the subtle difference via English. In a formal situation, however, Royal Mother or Mother-Queen would be a possible rendition (to avoid confusion with the Queen Mother) for the Empress Consort when addressed by her children, while Royal Father (or Father-Royal, if you want to be exotic) should work for the Emperor.