A Tale of Fish and Dragon · Archives
Terminology Guide
The following terms are used in the world of A Tale of Fish and Dragon. Chinese terms remain in the first column where their sound and cultural weight are part of the setting.
| Term | Closest English sense | Meaning in the world of A Tale of Fish and Dragon |
|---|---|---|
| Ming (名) | name; recognized identity | More than a personal name: it is the recognition that allows a person to be remembered, recorded, and protected by a community. |
| Banming (半名) | provisional identity | A temporary, incomplete registration often used for survivors, displaced people, and children whose belonging has not yet been determined. |
| Shiming (失名) | loss of name | The loss of one's recorded identity or origin, whether through death, sale, migration, or disaster. |
| Guiming (归名) | restoration of a name | Returning a lost or erased person to recognition and memory. |
| Wenming (问名) | asking the name | An inquiry into identity, affiliation, qualification, and sometimes a possible marriage alliance. |
| Jiming (记名) | registering a name | Entering a person into collective memory. It can offer protection, but it can also become a means of control. |
| Zhenming (真名) | true name | A birth-name or hidden name bound to origin, bloodline, and old debts. |
| Ce (册) | register; record book | A core instrument of walled civilization: it preserves memory, organizes people and resources, and can also alter the truth. |
| Ruce (入册) | entering the register | Formal admission into an administrative order; people, goods, wells, roads, medicines, and wars may all be registered. |
| Zhengce (正册) | official register | The authoritative record. To enter it is to receive formal recognition; to be removed from it is to vanish from later accounts. |
| Neiji (内记) | internal record | A restricted or confidential account, kept apart from what is shown publicly. |
| Waiji (外记) | public record | The version of events made visible to ordinary people or outside envoys. |
| Mu (木) | inscribed wooden record | In a world before paper, wood carries orders, proof, memory, and boundaries. |
| Kemu (刻木) | inscribed slip | A mark or text cut into wood, serving as a document, record, or command. |
| Duanmu (短木) | short message slip | A small wooden note used for brief news, warnings, and temporary orders. |
| Lumu (路木) | route pass | A record of a road, a travelling party, or a transfer of goods; close to a travel permit or logistics document. |
| Yaomu (药木) | medical record pass | A wooden record for medicine, healers, patients, or the movement of supplies. |
| Liangmu (粮木) | grain record | A token for granaries, allotments, loans, or relief grain. |
| Simingmu (死名木) | death-name record | A disaster or wartime register of the dead, made to resist their disappearance into forgetting. |
| Jimu (急木) | urgent dispatch | A wooden emergency message used to move grave news quickly. |
| Jinmu (禁木) | prohibition marker | A notice placed at a gate, shelter, road, or worksite to mark a restriction or boundary. |
| Lu (路) | road; route; network | Both a literal road and the channels through which medicine, grain, trade, marriage, and news move. |
| Yaolu (药路) | medicine route | The supply line along which herbs, healers, patients, and information travel. |
| Lianglu (粮路) | grain route | A food supply line: a means of survival and a frequent object of conflict. |
| Shuilu (水路) | water route | Rivers and boat routes that resist complete control by any single power. |
| Linlu (林路) | forest way | Hidden hunting paths known to forest peoples; selling such knowledge can be treated as betrayal. |
| Shuiqi (水契) | water compact | A right or agreement concerning wells, channels, tides, water gates, or relief. |
| Shuikou (水口) | sluice; water gate | An engineering term for the mouth of a channel or drain. A mistaken water gate can drown stores, destroy roads, and kill people. |
| Duli (渡礼) | ferry due | The customary payment for crossing Fenglin Ferry, paid in salt, hides, shells, liquor, or labor. |
| Rendu (入渡) | entry for crossing | The registration, payment, and preparation involved in passing a ferry crossing. |
| Rensheng (人牲) | human chattel | People reduced to goods, labor, or sacrifice. The term deliberately retains its violence. |
| Shengyi (牲役) | bonded laborer | A worker positioned between human chattel and ordinary labor, often sent to the dirtiest and most dangerous work. |
| Tuoshengren (脱绳人) | one freed from the rope | A formerly bound or traded person who has regained a more independent status. |
| Tuojiangren (脱疆人) | one freed from the reins | A person no longer directly controlled by a master; the term emphasizes precarious freedom. |
| Houshi (候士) | junior guard | A lower-ranked armed servant in the walled order, assigned to escorting, carrying orders, and enforcement. |
| Yuanshi (垣士) | wall-guard | A sworn guardian recorded in the official rolls, with honor, upkeep, duty, and constraint. |
| Xiaoceren (小册人) | junior recorder | An apprentice clerk who measures wells, records water, and inscribes wooden slips. |
| Yaojiao (药脚) | medicine runner | An assistant who carries medicine, travels the medicine routes, and tends the sick. |
| Bo (帛) | silk; ceremonial cloth | A sign of ritual, craft, women's knowledge, and the prestige of the walled civilization, rather than mere fabric. |
| Bonu (帛女) | silk-daughter | A woman placed at the crossing of marriage alliance, learning, ritual, prophecy, and tribal interest. |
| Boshu (帛书) | silk covenant | A marriage-alliance document and a gift of knowledge, ritual, and political promise. |
| Bojin (帛禁) | silk prohibition | A restriction on the private transmission of knowledge associated with the silk-daughters, such as healing or watercraft. |
| Heli (合礼) | union rite | The formalized ceremony of joining two people, used to establish an acknowledged order of kinship. |
| Binghuo (并火) | joining fires | A Qihuo marriage and adoption rite centered on a shared hearth and shared survival. |
| Jiumeng (旧盟) | old covenant | An inherited compact between peoples: both an obligation and a resource others may invoke for their own purposes. |
| Shangfu (上父) | High Father | The senior leader of Youyuan, combining the roles of clan elder, founder, and source of ritual authority. |
| Shangmu / Mumo (上母 / 母嫖) | High Mother | The senior woman at the center of the household and inner court, whose authority is familial as well as political. |
| Ming Shaozhu (明少主) | the Bright Young Lord | An heir beginning to learn records, grain, water, and border affairs; not yet a finished ruler. |
| Dashaman (大萨满) | High Shaman | A principal ritual authority, prophet, and keeper of long memory who also takes part in politics. |
| Huo yin / Lie yin (火印 / 猎印) | fire seal; hunt seal | A token of authority among the Qihuo people, carrying recognition among its branches. |
| Maiqi (买契) | purchase covenant | A written proof of sale. In transactions involving people, the term must retain its cruelty. |
| Bei (贝) | shell currency | An early medium of exchange used for salt, cloth, ferry dues, and accounts. |
| Tongpian (铜片) | copper token | An emerging standardized currency, suggesting the extension of state power into exchange. |
| Anshi (暗市) | shadow market | A black market for forbidden goods, people, information, and tools. |
| Zhang (账) | account; debt | A ledger of goods and money, but also the record of old injuries, blood debts, and obligations. |
| Gu pai (骨牌) | bone token | A marker used in migration to present a patient, family, or appeal for aid. |
| Sheng gui tian, si gui di (生归天，死归地) | "The living return to heaven; the dead return to earth." | A solemn prayer of life and death, with local variations that return the dead to water, fire, or forest. |
| Heiya (黑牙) | Black Fang | A dark-metal dagger and a token of old grievance. Its history should not be explained too quickly. |
| Dagon (大弓) | the Great Bow | An inherited weapon and the source of an old sun-shooting legend; it carries the weight of a killing arrow. |
| Jiumianju (金面具) | golden mask | A trace of the artisan line and an echo of a future bronze-age memory. |
| Guling (骨车) | bone cart | A cart for the dead after war or disaster, an effort not to let them disappear entirely. |
| Dumu (渡木) | crossing permit | A ferry token central to the new order at Fenglin Ferry, separating the ability to cross from permission to cross. |
| Wumu (无木) | without a token | A person without a crossing, route, or name record: alive, yet nearly absent from the order of things. |
| Huo ci (火次) | fire-watch cycle | A unit of time counted by tending and changing fires when day and night no longer serve. |
| Xing ci (醒次) | waking cycle | A measure of time based on a round of sleep and waking. |
| Chao ci (潮次) | tide cycle | A time measure for coasts and straits, where tide is more reliable than the sun. |
| Bingji (冰脊) | ice ridge | A thick, traversable line of ice that shifts with the tide and must be read continually. |
| Pizhou (皮舟) | skin boat | A hide-covered frame boat built from several peoples' techniques; its making is marked by trial and loss. |
| Dongrou (冬肉) | winter meat | The flesh cut from a true dragon by survivors in the seventh book: first a debt of survival, never a feast or a gift of power. |
| Shangyouren (上游人) | upriver people | Established inhabitants of the new lands, never an empty background to another people's arrival. |
| Guanxingtai (观星台) | star-watching terrace | A modest observatory where calendars and memory are remade through argument, error, and shared use. |