i sometimes worry i’ll become one of those guys who is known for starting but never finishing any of his projects. i’ve got more than a couple in the works at the moment, one of which is a comprehensive collection of chinese family names. more on that in a minute.

other projects include the usual language study, though somewhat reduced from an earlier post. my desire for even the most basic understanding of manchu has been set aside, though it will undoubtedly be picked up at a later date. presently my study is limited to mandarin and wu, the focus of the latter being slowly shifted east from changzhou to shanghai. i’m still passively accepting any uyghur that may creep in and i’m maintaining my plan to pick up enough to do the restaurant thing without needing mandarin. in a couple weeks i’ll be retrieving my copy of the medina books on arabic so that i can make a running leap back into that.

outside of language i’ve recently taken up seal carving. it’s more portable and affordable than my guqin endeavours. i also have a couple internet-based projects in the works which i hope to have running in a couple weeks.

back to the family name deal, i’m still in the early stages of reviewing how big of an undertaking it really is. at this point i’m also setting down my own ground rules to keep it from going out of control, since i’d imagine that ultimately any character could qualify as a family name. i’ve decided i need the names to be typeable using unicode. that covers a great deal of characters, but there’s always the chance that someone is named something not otherwise covered. in that case, if it can be easily done by adding ⺅ or some other radical, i’ll include it. anything more complex than that and it’s not likely to appear. further, i’m encountering a huge number of z-variants (e.g. 莊 = 荘) which i’m also including.

as to what really qualifies as a family name, i’m only requiring that the word is listed in any reputable dictionary as existing as a surname or, alternatively, that it’s actually being used as one in an official capacity. someone saying “no really. my family name is ㇀.” doesn’t work unless it’s on paper/plastic in some official capacity. however archaic names will be included, e.g. 軒.

in another week or two i’ll really sit down and start logging all the information in some systematic manner and getting it online for corrections.