从别号流行看明朝人的好名风气

Alias Name as a Fashion: the Ethos of People in Ming Dynasty about Reputations

别号流行是明代社会史中颇值得关注的一个现象。在明代,无论帝王、士民,还是倡优、奴仆、盗贼,甚至僧人、妇女,不分良贱、僧俗、男女,无不以取一别号为时尚,进而导致别号泛滥。这一现象的广泛出现且成为一时风尚,大抵是明朝人好名风气的反映,其背后有深层的社会史原因及其价值,由此导致士民、良贱、僧俗、雅俗之间的互动,士、农、工、商四民界限的突破,以及知识人群体的壮大。这是文胜质衰的时代,雅文化却因此得以确立。

The phenomenon that alias name overwhelmedthe social life during the Ming dynasty isa noticeable but understudied issue for the social history of Ming. The popularity of taking aliasname manifests in its wide social applicability that, whether emperors or commoners, whether prosti-tutes or servants, whether monks or housewives, in a word, disregarding one's social origin and sta-tus, all regarded taking an alias name as a fashion to emulate, to the extent of its inundation. Its fur-ther social implications and consequences grounded in the social dynamic of the heightened interac-tion among different walks of life, the porous boundary among traditionally defined hierarchical sys-tem consisted of intellectual-bureaucrats, peasants, artisans and merchants, and the enlargement ofthe social group of the civil examination candidates all account for this phenomenon. It ended upwith an age defined by high culture rather by martial strength, which in turns resulted in the forma-tion of Ming's elite culture.