《释名》的思想内容

The Thoughts and Content of Shi Ming

汉末刘熙的著作是已知的第一部汉语语源专著,它创造性地提出“名之于实,各有义类”的语源学思想,从天文地理、人体、人伦、语言、衣食起居、文书、器具、病丧共八个大类取材选词,收录了1400多个条目,广泛采用声训手段追溯人、物、事之名源,通过大量推源实践体现了朴素的汉语语源学理论。

Shi Ming,written by Liu Xi in the Han dynasty,is the first monograph of Chinese etymology.This book put forward creatively an etymological thought that a name of an object is made according to an special etymological meaning.It collected more than 1400 entries,including 8 categories of words about astronomy and geography,human body,human relations,language,daily life,books,tools,diseases and death.Liu xi used the phonetic relations between words to find out the etymologies,and this method presented his pristine etymological thoughts.