[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":220},["ShallowReactive",2],{"article:business-name-selection:en":3,"article-topic:name-analysis:en":123,"related-articles:en:name-analysis:business-name-selection:bazi-name-selection":197},{"slug":4,"title":5,"description":6,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":12,"noindex":13,"summary":14,"sections":15,"references":85,"relatedTools":102,"seo":104,"contentImage":109},"business-name-selection","Business Name Selection: The Register, the Sign, and the Fragment","A business name must be distinctive at the register and easy on a sign, and the two pull against each other. Article 11 refuses descriptive marks; a sign reads at about 1:120.","Name Analysis","name-analysis","","chen-jun","2026-10-26","2026-10-30",false,"Trademark classification runs to 45 classes, and Article 11 refuses signs that merely describe the goods — so the name that tells a customer most directly what you sell is the one most likely to be refused. Signage follows a ratio of about one unit of character height per 120 of viewing distance.",[16,21,28,52,58,63,72,80],{"heading":17,"body":18},"A business name has two jobs that pull against each other",[19,20],"A business name is asked to be distinctive and to be easy, and those two requirements point in opposite directions. Distinctiveness is judged at a register: the name has to be unlike anything already recorded in the class you trade in, and unlike the words that simply describe what you sell. Easiness is judged in the mouth and on a sign: it has to survive a bad phone line and be readable from across a street.","The tension is real, and it explains why most workable names look the way they do — a familiar word in an unfamiliar combination, rather than either an ordinary phrase or an invented string. An invented string passes the register and fails the phone line. A plain description passes the phone line and fails the register. The five-phase reading sits outside both tests, which is why it belongs at the end rather than at the start.",{"heading":22,"body":23,"bullets":24},"The classical text gives behaviours, not industries","The earliest written statement of the five phases is a chapter of the Book of Documents, and the first thing it does is give each phase a behaviour: water soaks and descends, fire flames and rises, wood bends and straightens, metal yields and changes, earth accepts and grows. Everything else in the chapter — the flavours, the seasons — is derived from those behaviours.",[25,26,27],"What the chapter does not contain is an industry classification. No trade is assigned to a phase, and nothing is said to attract anything.","The trade associations used in business naming — water for shipping and cash flow, fire for food and visibility, metal for finance and machinery, wood for education and growth, earth for property — were assembled much later by practitioners. They are a mnemonic, not a derivation.","The text is worth reading precisely because it marks where the scheme stops. Quoting it in support of an industry map means quoting a chapter that says something narrower.",{"heading":29,"body":30,"table":34},"The register: 45 classes, and a refusal you cannot argue with",[31,32,33],"Trademark classification divides goods and services into 45 classes — 34 for goods, 11 for services — and a name is cleared class by class. That number matters because cost scales with it: a shop that sells prepared food and also packages tea is in more than one class, and each one is a separate application and a separate search.","The harder constraint is not availability but distinctiveness. Article 11 of the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China refuses registration to signs that lack distinctive character, and specifically to signs that merely describe the quality, principal raw material, function, use, weight or quantity of the goods. The practical consequence is uncomfortable: the name that tells a customer most directly what you sell is the name the register is most likely to refuse.","Take three names a teahouse might consider, and apply the rule rather than a preference:",{"headers":35,"rows":39},[36,37,38],"Name","What it says","How it fares",[40,44,48],[41,42,43],"岩茶记","Names the product directly — rock tea, recorded","Descriptive of the goods; the weakest position at the register",[45,46,47],"小满","A solar term, with no link to tea","Distinctive, but already carried by an established beverage brand",[49,50,51],"水云间","Evocative, with no product claim","Distinctive and clear of the trade",{"heading":53,"body":54},"The sign: legibility has a ratio, not a taste",[55,56,57],"Shopfront lettering follows a rule of thumb that has been in use for a century: about one unit of character height for every 120 units of viewing distance. In metric that is roughly 2.5 cm of height per 3 m. A sign read from 5 m needs characters around 4 cm high; one read from 30 m across a road needs about 25 cm.","Two adjustments apply to Chinese. The first is stroke density: legibility depends on separating strokes, not on overall height, so a character with many strokes needs to sit at the upper end of the range while a sparse one survives at the lower end. The second is that the rule is for a reader who is looking; a sign meant to be caught in peripheral vision, on a passing vehicle, needs to be larger again.","This is the check that eliminates names cheaply. Write the three shortlisted names at the height the sign will actually be, pin the sheet to a wall, and walk back until you cannot read them. The distance at which each one fails is a number, and it will not be the same for all three.",{"heading":59,"body":60},"The shortening happens without you",[61,62],"Customers abbreviate. A name of four characters or more gets cut to two in speech, and the two that survive are chosen by the people saying it, not by the founder. That is why the test worth running is not how the full name sounds but which fragment it leaves behind.","The test is simple and takes a minute: say the name to someone who has not heard it, wait a day, and ask them to repeat it. What comes back is the name you will actually be called. If that fragment is dull, ambiguous, or collides with a competitor, the full name is already lost — no amount of signage recovers a name that the street has shortened into something else.",{"heading":64,"body":65,"bullets":66},"Where the element reading fits","Once a shortlist has survived the register, the sign and the shortening test, an element reading is a legitimate way to choose between names that all work. It is a tie-breaker, and it should be applied in that order for a plain reason: every test above can eliminate a candidate outright, and the element reading cannot.",[67,68,69,70,71],"Check the register first, in the classes you will actually trade in, plus the company-name register and the domain.","Check the sign at the size it will be made, and at the distance it will be read from.","Check the fragment the name will be shortened to, by asking someone to repeat it a day later.","Check the sound over a bad line and the spelling to a stranger.","Only then compare what is left on element, if that matters to you.",{"heading":73,"body":74,"bullets":75},"What the element of a name cannot settle","Four limits, stated plainly:",[76,77,78,79],"It cannot make a product competitive. Price, quality, location and word of mouth decide whether a shop survives its second year.","It cannot override a trademark. An element reading does not make an unavailable name usable, and it does not make a descriptive one registrable.","It cannot settle the chart question. Two advisers read the same chart and name different useful elements, which is why this filter should never be the only one.","It cannot be checked. Nothing about a name's element can be tested against an outcome, so the honest position is that it is a preference the founder holds, not a property the business has.",{"heading":81,"body":82},"The order, by what it costs to find out",[83,84],"The register search costs money and a week. The sign test costs a sheet of paper. The shortening test costs a day of waiting. Run the cheap ones first, because they remove candidates before you pay for the expensive one — and because a name that fails the paper test never needed a search at all.","What none of this does is guarantee a good business. A name clears the way; it does not sell anything. The useful thing a founder can say about a name is not that it is auspicious but that it passed four tests they can describe, which is a claim someone else can check.",[86,94],{"id":87,"kind":88,"title":89,"detail":90,"publisher":91,"url":92,"accessedAt":93},"shangshuHongfan","traditional","Book of Documents, “The Great Plan” (尚書·洪範)","The chapter that gives each of the five phases a behaviour rather than a list of trades, and derives the five flavours from those behaviours. Cited because it is the earliest place the scheme is stated, and because it contains no industry classification at all.","Wikisource digital text","https:\u002F\u002Fzh.wikisource.org\u002Fwiki\u002F%E5%B0%9A%E6%9B%B8\u002F%E6%B4%AA%E7%AF%84","2026-10-25",{"id":95,"kind":96,"title":97,"detail":98,"publisher":99,"url":100,"accessedAt":101},"apaBarnumEffect","practical","APA Dictionary of Psychology: Barnum effect","A psychology reference for why broad, favourable personality descriptions can feel personally accurate. It does not evaluate BaZi calculations themselves.","American Psychological Association","https:\u002F\u002Fdictionary.apa.org\u002Fbarnum-effect","2026-07-14",[103],"bazi-name-selection",{"title":105,"description":106,"path":107,"type":108},"Business Name Selection: Register, Sign, Fragment","Name a shop with the checks that can eliminate a candidate: distinctiveness at the register, legibility on a sign, and the fragment customers will shorten it to.","\u002Farticles\u002Fbusiness-name-selection","article",{"src":110,"srcByLocale":111,"alt":113,"width":114,"height":115,"altByLocale":116,"captionByLocale":119},"\u002Fimg\u002Farticles\u002Fbusiness-name-selection.svg",{"tw":112},"\u002Fimg\u002Farticles\u002Fbusiness-name-selection-tw.svg","Two-column diagram pairing four five-element business-naming claims with the commercial checks a launch actually turns on: findability, cost, trademark, domain and pricing.",1280,960,{"zh":117,"tw":118},"两栏对照图：左栏是四条五行取名说法，右栏是开业真正要过的关——能不能被找到、价格、商标、域名和现金流。","兩欄對照圖：左欄是四條五行取名說法，右欄是開業真正要過的關——能不能被找到、價格、商標、域名和現金流。",{"en":120,"zh":121,"tw":122},"A business name is checked by customers, a registrar and a search box before it is read for its element. The classical five phases describe behaviours rather than industries, so the element of a name is a preference and never the thing a launch turns on.","一个店名先要被顾客、注册机构和搜索框检验，然后才轮到五行。古典文献里的五行讲的是动作而不是行业，所以名字的五行只是偏好，从来不是开业成败的关键。","一個店名先要被顧客、註冊機構和搜尋框檢驗，然後才輪到五行。古典文獻裡的五行講的是動作而不是行業，所以名字的五行只是偏好，從來不是開業成敗的關鍵。",{"topic":124,"articles":154,"tools":190},{"slug":8,"title":7,"eyebrow":125,"description":126,"relatedTools":127,"articleIdeas":128,"seo":134,"sections":138},"Naming and five elements","How a Chinese name is actually chosen: what survives from the classical statement of naming, what stroke counting computes, what a five-elements selection can and cannot decide, and the order the four should be applied in.",[103],[129,130,131,132,133],"Name Sound and Meaning","Five Elements Name Selection","Business Name Selection","Chinese Name Stroke Analysis","Naming Avoidances in the Classical Texts",{"title":135,"description":136,"path":137},"Chinese Name Analysis Guide","Learn how Chinese names are chosen: the classical statement of naming, stroke counting, five-elements selection, and the order to apply them in.","\u002Ftopics\u002Fname-analysis",[139,142,145,148,151],{"heading":140,"body":141},"A naming decision is made on sound and meaning, then checked against tradition","The earliest systematic statement of Chinese naming that survives is a short answer in the Zuo Tradition. Asked what to name his newborn son, Shen Xu answers that names come in five kinds — from the circumstance of the birth, from a virtue, from a resemblance, from an object, from the father — and then lists six things a name is not taken from: a state, an office, a mountain or river, a hidden illness, a domestic animal, a ritual vessel. His reason is practical rather than mystical. The Zhou used tabooing in the service of the spirits, and a name will be tabooed in the end, so a name whose avoidance costs nothing is the one to choose. What is absent from that whole passage is every numerological device that later got attached to naming. No stroke count, no five-phase fit, no score. The classical statement is about meaning, reference, and the consequences of the word itself — which is also where the decision is still made today.",{"heading":143,"body":144},"Four traditions get applied to the same name, and they do not convert","Most naming advice blends four separate traditions without saying so, and each answers a different question. Sound and meaning answer what the name says and how it carries. Stroke counting answers how many marks each character takes. Five-elements selection answers which phase the chart is short of. Written form answers how the name survives being written and typed for a lifetime. They are not translations of one another: a name can be excellent on meaning and unremarkable on stroke count, and the reverse is just as common. The practical consequence is that no single ranking of names exists, and any tool that returns one has silently picked weights for you. Keeping the four apart is most of the work of choosing a name well.",{"heading":146,"body":147},"Stroke counting: five sums over the same characters","The stroke-count method — Wu Ge, the five grids — takes a written name, counts the strokes in each character, and reads the five resulting numbers through a traditional table of favourable and unfavourable values. The system was built in Japan in the early twentieth century and adopted into Chinese naming practice afterwards, which is why its stroke standard is the Kangxi dictionary rather than the forms people write today. Every grid is a different sum over the same two or three characters, and the numbers move depending on four decisions that are conventions rather than measurements: traditional characters rather than simplified, radicals counted as the characters they came from, and the luck tables themselves. Where two calculators disagree about a name, the disagreement is the finding.",{"heading":149,"body":150},"Five elements: the step that carries the weight is the one that is argued about","A five-elements selection starts from a birth chart and ends at a shortlist of characters. In between it fixes the birth data, lays out the four pillars, names the Day Master, and judges which element the chart is short of. The first three of those are reproducible arithmetic. The fourth is a judgement about the whole chart — how much support the Day Master has, whether the season is on its side, what the month branch contributes — and it is exactly there that two schools read the same chart and name opposite useful elements. The classical statement of the five phases gives each phase a behaviour — water soaks and descends, fire flames and rises, wood bends and straightens, metal yields and changes, earth accepts and grows — and contains no industry classification at all.",{"heading":152,"body":153},"The order to apply them in","Meaning and sound come first, because they are what a person hears inside their own name and what the family can check by saying it out loud. Written form comes next, because a name filled into a form several thousand times is worth choosing partly for how long it takes to write. Stroke counting and five-elements fit come after, and only as tiebreakers between names that already work. For a business name the order shifts once more: trademark, domain, sayability and signage all come before any element reading, and a name that fails one of those fails regardless of its phase. None of the four traditions reaches a person's health, schooling, work or relationships, and none of them needs correcting by swapping out a character the family already loves.",[155,168,178,187],{"slug":156,"title":157,"description":158,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":159,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":160,"updatedAt":161,"summary":162,"relatedTools":163,"seo":165},"chinese-name-stroke-analysis","Chinese Name Stroke Analysis: The Five Grids, Counted","How the five grids are actually counted, including the four cases for the outer grid, why 強 and 强 give different charts, and what the eighty-one labels cannot settle.","\u002Fpages\u002Farticles\u002Fxingming-bihua-jixiong.html","2025-09-17","2026-10-28","The arithmetic is reproducible and the labels are not. One character written two ways moves the earth, outer and total grids; a name that reads as uniformly favourable often is not.",[103,164],"wu-ge-name-analysis",{"title":157,"description":166,"path":167,"type":108},"Five grids, four cases for the outer grid, Kangxi strokes rather than simplified forms — and why the eighty-one labels are a table, not a measurement.","\u002Farticles\u002Fchinese-name-stroke-analysis",{"slug":169,"title":170,"description":171,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":11,"summary":172,"relatedTools":173,"seo":174},"five-elements-name-selection","Five Elements Name Selection: How the Method Actually Works","See what a five-elements name selection computes, where the Day Master strength judgement carries the weight, and why two schools can name opposite useful elements from the same chart.","A five-elements selection does four reproducible steps and then hands you a shortlist. The Day Master strength judgement is the step that carries the weight, and two schools can read the same chart and name opposite elements.",[103],{"title":175,"description":176,"path":177,"type":108},"Five Elements Name Selection: How the Method Works","Learn what a five-elements name selection computes, how Day Master strength is judged, and why sound and meaning decide the shortlist.","\u002Farticles\u002Ffive-elements-name-selection",{"slug":179,"title":180,"description":181,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":12,"summary":182,"relatedTools":183,"seo":184},"name-sound-and-meaning","Chinese Name Sound and Meaning: Cost, Tone, and Stroke Counts","The oldest text on naming argues from cost, not luck: a name is a word the system must retire. Then tone sandhi, syllable seams, and stroke counts that move with the script.","Shen Xu's six avoidances all follow one rule — do not retire a word the rites still need. The modern five-grid method turns the name into an integer instead, and 张伟 scores 金火金 in simplified strokes but 木木木 in traditional, because four of the five grids move.",[103],{"title":180,"description":185,"path":186,"type":108},"Read the classical statement of what a name is for, then check the spoken form, the syllable seam, and whether the stroke count survives a change of script.","\u002Farticles\u002Fname-sound-and-meaning",{"slug":4,"title":5,"description":6,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":12,"summary":14,"relatedTools":188,"seo":189},[103],{"title":105,"description":106,"path":107,"type":108},[191],{"slug":103,"title":192,"shortTitle":193,"description":194,"category":195,"status":196},"BaZi Name Selection Tool","Name Selection","Compare Chinese candidate names using declared stroke, pronunciation, meaning, and traditional element conventions as a cultural worksheet.","Naming","live",{"articles":198},[199,202,217],{"slug":156,"title":157,"description":158,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":159,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":160,"updatedAt":161,"summary":162,"relatedTools":200,"seo":201},[103,164],{"title":157,"description":166,"path":167,"type":108},{"slug":203,"title":204,"description":205,"category":206,"topicSlug":207,"legacyPath":208,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":209,"updatedAt":210,"summary":211,"relatedTools":212,"seo":214},"favorable-unfavorable-elements","Favorable and Unfavorable Elements in BaZi","A comprehensive guide to identifying favorable (Yong Shen) and unfavorable elements in BaZi — the key to accurate chart interpretation and practical life guidance.","BaZi","bazi-advanced","\u002Fpages\u002Farticles\u002Fbazi-yongshen-jishen.html","2025-12-18","2026-10-14","Knowing your favorable and unfavorable elements is the foundation of practical BaZi application. It guides career choices, color preferences, and timing decisions.",[213,103],"bazi-four-pillars",{"title":204,"description":215,"path":216},"Learn to identify favorable and unfavorable elements in BaZi for accurate chart interpretation and practical life guidance.","\u002Farticles\u002Ffavorable-unfavorable-elements",{"slug":169,"title":170,"description":171,"category":7,"topicSlug":8,"legacyPath":9,"authorId":10,"publishedAt":11,"updatedAt":11,"summary":172,"relatedTools":218,"seo":219},[103],{"title":175,"description":176,"path":177,"type":108},1793614153126]