Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Of course, Sui Xiong would know about Leon’s injury.
After all, Leon was wounded in his own temple. As a god, if he did not even know about what was going on within his own temple, then he might as well buy a piece of tofu and die trying to knock his head against it!
Sui Xiong was very unhappy, but he had no intentions of personally dealing with the Red Moon King.
Firstly, Leon was not seriously injured; secondly, regarding this matter… Leon was in fact, quite at fault himself.
He was the one running over to spy on someone else. As a result, he was wounded by the other’s counterattack. What was there for him to complain about?
Of course, if Leon was severely injured, Sui Xiong would not bother about being reasonable. But Leon was not seriously injured. Under such a situation, Brother Xiong was still willing to talk some sense.
Anyway, the strength of the Red Moon King was just as it was. Leon would surpass him sooner or later. When the time came, Leon should be the one to look for the Red Moon King to settle this grudge once and for all. This would make more sense.
In contrast, Sui Xiong was more concerned about something else at the moment.
“Name?” he asked. He was feeling somewhat confused as he looked at the report. “You mean to say that there are still so many nameless people in our Republic of Northwest?”
This report was submitted by Leonard, and its content was about the suggestion to carry out the “Perfect Name” movement in the Republic of Northwest.
Sui Xiong froze the moment he set his eyes on the report—why is there a need to perfect names? Could the reason be that there were still many people without names in the Republic of Northwest? Or there were too many strange and weird names?
As he read through the report carefully, he finally understood what Leonard meant.
In this world, the civilians did not have surnames. They merely had first names. Because of their lack of culture, there was nothing special about their names in general. Their names were usually made up of a few common words or some descriptive words related to their status. This led to a serious situation of repeated names.
Leonard did the calculations. Just among the permanent residents of Void City, there were 6,296 residents by the name of “Spoolin,” 5,261 by the name of “Joe” and 5,250 by the name of “Jack…” and these were the three most common names used in Void City.
Similarly, there were many other names that were also heavily repeated. In short, Void City had a total of 424,500 permanent residents, but only 1,109 people had names that were completely unique and not repeated at all.
After subtracting these names, the remaining ones were more or less repeated names. Adding them up would give a total of 4,991, which did not even amount to 5,000. If names that were less repetitive were further removed from the list, the final result would be 582 highly repetitive names that were used by a total of nearly 300,000 people.
Less than 600 names for 300,000 people would mean an average of one name being used every 500 people. Especially for some of the commonly used names, just by shouting out one of these names while walking on the main streets could turn many heads around.
In fact, this situation was no big deal, but Leonard could not help finding it disconcerting.
The reason was simple. The ninth most heavily repeated name was “Leonard.” There was a total of 4,006 people with this name.
At first, Leonard did not take this to heart. Or rather, he did not even notice this problem in the first place. Not long ago, he presided over the restructuring of the entire army. In the process of reorganizing the troops, he checked through the army roster with great interest. But he was embarrassed to find out that there were a few Leonards in the army. The norm was that one page would have two to three soldiers by the name of Leonard.
In the entire army of the Republic of Northwest, there were more than one hundred people by the name of “Leonard.”
This was seriously beyond all reason. There were not many army troops in the Republic of Northwest to start with, and the total number of names on that roster was only around three thousand!
Leonard was so shocked by this incident that naturally he would want to solve the problem. But he could not possibly get so many people to change their names. After much deliberation, he proposed to promote the “Perfect Name” movement to let people choose their own surnames.
The first names could be repeated, but the surnames generally would not be repeated.
After all, the people of the Republic of Northwest had a certain level of culture now. They would absolutely not be so slipshod like their older generations when it came to taking surnames for themselves.
There was another advantage to this proposal. It could greatly boost people’s self-confidence and their sense of pride.
In this world, a “surname” had always been a prerogative of the aristocrats. Even for the well-off merchants, most of them did not have surnames. If the civilians of the Republic of Northwest could all have surnames, that would at least give them a sense of superiority.
Also, this could manifest their culture and highlight the uniqueness of the Republic of Northwest. It could even attract talents who yearned for continuity of the familial clan.
Overall, putting aside the fact that this method would require a slight increase in administrative costs, it would also bring in many benefits. With only one downside amidst all the benefits, it was certainly a method worth implementing.
Of course, this was Leonard’s side of the story.
After reading the report, Sui Xiong had no thoughts of objecting. However, he was reminded of another incident.
He recalled a time when he was in school, and Professor Cheng was giving a lecture on history. Professor Cheng talked about two incidents. One was the “Citizens Take Surnames” incident that happened in the Spring and Autumn Warring States period in China, and the other was the “Popularization of Surnames” incident that happened in the Meiji Restoration period in Japan.
These two incidents were nearly 2,000 years apart, but they shared a striking consistency. When choosing surnames, civilians without surnames often based their choices on their home address, job, status, or even their good wishes. They came up with all kinds of surnames for themselves and their descendants.
However, over time, out of all the civilians from ancient China who had chosen surnames for themselves, many were unable to pass down these surnames. Therefore, up till now, the commonly seen surnames in China that had been passed down were only those few of the ancient aristocrats. Professor Cheng once jokingly lamented that in contemporary China, the streets were filled with descendants of princes and marquises, generals and ministers, or even descendants of wealthy merchants. While surnames truly originated from the ancestors who were poor civilians, these surnames were on the contrary very few.
In fact, even if the movement for people to choose their surnames had persisted up to the present day—take Japan for instance, with less than 200 years of age since it was established, the situation of the congregation of surnames was already gradually drawing attention, let alone China. Moreover, this was a modern society where it was relatively easy to see the poor having offspring to carry on their family names.
This time, if the Republic of Northwest were to promote the movement for people to choose their surnames, it was conceivable to think of how many strange surnames would come into the picture. The thing was, hundreds and thousands of years from now, how many of these surnames would be passed down?
As he thought about this, Sui Xiong could not help lament.
After sighing, he brought this proposal to the meeting of top officials for discussion.
Though given his authority, he could easily make the final call, he still felt that it would be better to discuss it. As a result, many opinions were put forward during the discussion.
“It’s good to allow people to choose their surnames, but there must be some restrictions. We can’t have any awkward surnames.”
“True. We can’t have them naming themselves ‘Dog Poop,”Cat’s Ears’ and such. That would be too weird!”
“‘Dog Poop’ is certainly a no-no, but how is Cat’s Ears weird?”
“Well… I’m just saying…”
“A surname like ‘Void Space’ is not good either. It’s easy to be misunderstood.”
“Right! This can’t be made a surname too. If not, a few hundred years later, the later generations might think that they are the sons of Our Majesty…”
“I’m just a jellyfish, how would it be possible for me to have so many sons of!”
“Your Majesty, something like that has to have preventive measures!”
After some discussion, a number of supplementary suggestions and suggestions for improvement were put forward. Then finally, this proposal was successfully passed.
A few days later, the movement for people to choose their surnames was officially commenced in the Republic of Northwest.
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