Style name

A style name, also called courtesy name, is a name usually given to a man when he reaches twenty years of age. Style names are either given by the parents or chosen by the man later in life. Since the style name respects the owner's adulthood, it was used in place of their given name by people born in the same generation. Calling someone by their given name was considered rude if the speaker was the same age as the addressee. After a man had his style name, his given name was reserved for his elders and himself. Creating these names was a common practice in Imperial China and was not largely extended to other cultures.

Style names usually consist of two syllables and two characters, and would be used after the surname, such as Zhuge Liang and his style name, "Kongming", would be used as "Zhuge Kongming".

Women sometimes obtained style names after they were married. Unlike men, however, their new names were kept privately for their husbands and were rarely written in historical records.

The practice of making style names have been fading since the New Culture Movement in China.

In Koei's titles, style names are often used as a simple way of forming a bond between characters. It implies that the speaker highly respects the addressee. Here are a few general examples that appear in Koei's titles.


 * speaker -> addressee
 * Liu Bei -> Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang
 * Cao Cao -> Cao Pi, Cao Ren
 * Sun Quan -> Zhou Tai

The characters from the Dynasty Warriors series individually refer to themselves by family name and style name whenever possible. When the speaker declares his intentions in this manner, it is a sign of his unshaken integrity and determination that he has in his words. The series changes when these proclamations are used, but it is often spoken when a character is challenging his competition (i.e. Zhang Liao calls himself "Zhang Wenyuan" during the Battle of He Fei).

While style names are present in the Asian scripts for games, they are omitted in most of the English adaptions.