说“爺”道“娘”

A discussion on the characters "爺" and "娘"

本文讨论"耶"与"爺"、"孃"与"娘"二组字的古今演变。文章指出指称父亲的"爺"古本作"邪"或"耶";"爺"大约是"耶"受"爸""爹""爺"一类字的影响产生的增旁俗字,始见于五代,宋代前后开始通行。"娘"本指少女,引申指妻子、主母等,六朝碑刻中已多见用例,而"孃"指母亲,可靠的用例唐代初期始见,二字用法本有严格区别;大约晚唐五代开始,表母称的"孃"亦或写作同音的"娘",才出现了二字混用的情况;到了宋元以后,二字的用法就完全混淆了。研究汉字的古今演变要注意利用碑刻、写本等出土文献资料;有的论著完全依据宋以后用字已"当代化"的刻本文献来讨论"爺""娘"的古今演变,往往难以揭示其演变的真相。

This paper discusses the evolution of two groups of Chinese characters, '耶爺' and '孃娘'. It finds that the character '爺', which means 'father', is firstly written as '邪' or ' 耶'. Affected by its synonyms ' 爸'and '爹', '耶' changes into '爺', which is found in the texts of the Five Dynasties and becomes popular during the Song Dynasty. On the other hand, the meaning of the character ' 娘 ' extends its meaning from' maid' to 'wife' and 'female master', which is widely used in the inscriptions during the Six Dynasties. The original meaning of ' 孃' is ' mother', and its earliest reliable cases can be traced back to the early Tang Dynasty. The distinction between ' 娘 ' and ' 孃 ' is obvious. In the late Tang and the Five Dynasties, the meaning 'mother' begins to be written as '娘' because of the same pronunciation of the two characters. After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, ' 娘 ' and ' 孃 ' are totally confused. The paper also emphasizes that in researching the evolution of Chinese characters, the proofs should be based on the unearthed documents, such as inscriptions and manuscripts, instead of the block-printed documents after the Song Dynasty.