Ancient times, our ancestors lived a social life, the main content of life is through self defense to protect themselves, or collection and hunting to sustain life.Their primitive life, and also don't have to name to distinguish between each other.So Lao tzu said: in the daodejing "unknown of the beginning of all things, a famous the mother of all things."Mean, everything had no name, later that because of the need to have a name.Especially for the human society, along with the progress of the society and the increase of population, the interpersonal communication increasingly frequent, to a certain group of people with another group of people, a sign of a certain group of people has emerged, which we call "family name";Among a group of people, in order to distinguish each other, also appeared a belongs only to personal logo, this logo is what we call the "name".In social activities, no matter what a group of people, in their own internal use only "famous" can distinguish between each other, with another group of people, just say "name" is not enough to show that their identity, only himself in the crowd of symbol "family name" with their own "famous" together, can fully express themselves.A sign of such a group of people and their logo, is the earliest human names.About the origin of human names, from the Chinese character ", "the word itself can infer its original meaning.The Chinese characters by "evening" and "mouth" of two parts, the said wen jie zi ", explained: "name, also, from the mouth, evening.

Evening, ghost also, ghost not meet, so with his lips from name."Mean, in the early days of social activities, people can during the day when they met each other through the body, face, voice recognition, but at night because I can't see each other clearly, cannot identify external characteristics, only through a self-reported name to distinguish.Therefore, "sign up" has become each person had to do.This "sign up", that is, said wen jie zi ", "with the name", first name is thus produced.

Visible, the produce of names is the need of social communication, is the most essential role in social activities is advantageous for the difference between each other.However, early man's name as well as fixed later, people "with the name 'mouth, you can use your own body when certain characteristics as a name, let others easy to identify;Or in some identification of a person, put some of the characteristics of the man as his name or symbol.This kind of practice, and we later used to put a special tall people referred to as the "big man", take a walk like to shake the woman called "lines", "the wind swing willow" similar to 11 points.However, with the change of living environment, the characteristics of the people will change too.In some people's "big man" original people maybe in other people's of medium height, the original walk "lines", "the wind swing willow" in the eyes of others may feel plate is too hard.To the new environment in a new group of people, "big man", "lines", "the wind swing willow" had never noticed some features may be found again, such as the "big man" can be a sparse hair brown, so his name or symbol may be these people are called "yellow hair," "XiLa", or "yellow hair XiLa" fly "lines", "the wind swing willow", are also likely to be large and because the eyes of god, known as "electric eye".In this way, they will have a new name in the new environment.In this case, have a fixed name has become a necessary of life, the person's name and thus never fixed to the fixed, the person's name so he is able to produce.According to research, the earliest in China have a fixed name may be the head of the clan society in the legend, or in the tribeThe warIn heroes, such as fu xi, the female worm, yao, shun, qi, abandon, etc.This statement, generally conforms to the social law of development., of course, the above said or written before about things, when text appear, originally names also evolved to text stage of oral expression.

At present, have found that some of the primitive society of pottery has a one or two symbols depicting around, according to expert textual research, these symbols associated with the names of the early.If this interpretation are to be believed, then, these names are also the earliest words in our country.In shang dynasty, a spate of words and to finalize the design in our country, has more than 5000 in total, a large part of which is also the person's name.We find in the as in the oracle bones of the shang dynasty, not only have the Chinese character "name", but also the nonyl, ding, such as c, small b names.These, also is our country early found in some of the written name.In short, name is produced in the early human society a kind of cultural phenomenon, its origin and development has experienced a historical process.First, it is the people used to distinguish the title of each other at random, then evolved as a sign of a fixed identity, after the words appear more be recorded in writing.Since the day it produces, it has showed the irreplaceable role.Since then, with the continuous development of the famous word itself and perfect, the name is becoming more and more become a indispensable personal symbol of human society.