Literary Chinese supplied a shared character inventory across East Asia. Local readings and laws then diverged.
Modern states added registers and allowed-character lists, which turned calligraphy into compliance.
Timeline
- Theophoric and virtue names
Early Chinese given names already used characters as compositional hopes.
- Generation poems
Elite lineages systematised shared generation characters.
- Lineage lists
Families maintained written generation orders — kin bureaucracy before the modern state.
- Meiji surnames + registers
Japan required family names and tightened the official written person.
- Korean hangul-only options
Hanja given names remained common even as hangul literacy and later KOSTAT counts rose.
- Japanese tōyō/jōyō reforms
Character lists for education spilled into name practice.
- Jinmeiyō kanji list
Japan explicitly listed extra characters allowed in given names.
- Luck-app market
Stroke-count products scaled; this atlas refuses them as science.
Eras
- Literary — Shared character world — A literate elite could read names across polities.
- Lineage — Poem as algorithm — The generation character was scheduled.
- Register — Koseki and family files — The state became the font authority.
- App — Luck overlay — A commercial layer this page will not use.
Shifts
- From hanja-default to hangul-optional Korea, late 20th c. — Visible in KOSTAT mixes by year — historical description.
- From open brush to closed list Japan, 20th c. — Jinmeiyō as legal friction.
- From kin-only to diaspora romanisation Global — The character and the Latin string both have to work.
The deep culture is real. The lucky-stroke industry is a parasite on that culture.