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Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

> Daughters too are expected to be “excellent” (佳, jia1—with the “man” radical)

It was my understanding that 人 was “man” as in “person” (gender neutral) and not “man” as in male.

Is the author wrong or have I been applying modern PC standards to my language study?

The article explains it perfectly: Understandably, male names still do not spot the “woman” radical (女, nü). 女 explicitly refers to women, whereas the “man” radical (亻, ren2) is more flexible, as it refers to humans.

This is also consistent with my understanding. On a cultural note, many ppl call Westerners with PC leanings “白左” and view the PC movement as a bit ridiculous. So definitely don’t apply modern PC standards to China.

I feel like the lines I quoted goes against the lines you quoted.

Maybe I am misreading the authors intent.

人 refers to man only in the sense of mankind. It is usually translated as person, like 中國人 (Chinese person). The character for specifically male people is 男 as in 男人 (guy).

> On a cultural note, many ppl call Westerners with PC leanings “白左” and view the PC movement as a bit ridiculous.

Putting aside whether "westerners with PC leanings" are "ridiculous" or not, it's hardly surprising that a country ruled by the CCP would have isolationist tendencies against international leftist movements that do not align with their own national interests. This power grab over language and definition is pretty evident in any "socialist" one party state that has existed.

“Westerners with PC leanings” are considered ridiculous by most every culture in the world. If there is any ideology that has a “power grab over language and definition” it is the modern, Western left.

I was very consciously not trying to have this discussion based on how I phrased my comment, so could you please raise the bar a little?

You are right, 人 (or radical 亻) is a gender neutral term means "Person/People". You can add gender ahead of it to be more specific, for example, Man means 男人 (Male Person), and Woman means 女人 (Female Person). As far as I can tell, there is no default gender for 人.

Learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_9

I don't know if the combination (亻+圭) makes it gender specific, but as far as I know, many males also has 佳 in their names. I'd say the character is neutral, as long as the name is not 佳佳 which sounded too cute to be a male.

On the other hand, 蕊 is not gender neutral, because you don't call a man Flower and it's a different "Rui" from the one in my name.

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