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The Chinese for ‘Confucius’ confirmed
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Extract
In February 1999 I published a review article in the Bulletin (62/1) pointing to the difficulties encountered in trying to confirm the derivation of the Latin term ‘ Confucius’ from its supposed Chinese original, ‘ Kong Fuzi’. Briefly, the only general lexicographer to cite the Chinese term from premodern materials, Morohashi Tetsuji, does no more than quote a memorial inscription from the early nineteenth century, long after the Jesuit coinage of the Latin term, for a Mongol period figure from amongst the descendants of Confucius. Other earlier sources on this figure do not confirm the usage ‘ Kong Fuzi’ in his memorial materials, but only the more usual‘ Kong Zi’. Consequently, my own speculation was that ‘ Kong Fuzi’ could have represented a deliberate barbarism on the part of the nineteenth-century author, Cai Jinquan. The expression ‘Kong Fuzi’, therefore, remained unattested before the Jesuits, raising the suspicion that it might even be a back-formation from Latin rather than genuinely Chinese.
- Type
- Notes And Communications
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , January 2000 , pp. 421 - 423
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 2000
References
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