Recognizing half of a character and half of a word

I have a student whose given name is Zǐhàn 子菡.  The first character means "child; son; offspring; seed; small thing", plus lots of other things, for which see here.  The second character is much more problematic, since it doesn't mean anything by itself, but only in combination, as in the disyllabic word hàndàn 菡萏 (literary term for "lotus flower, especially one that has not blossomed")

Reconstructions

• Middle Sinitic: /ɦʌm^X  dʌm^X/

(Zhengzhang): /*ɡuːmʔ  l'oːmʔ/

(source)

As is my habit with my many students from other countries, I asked 子菡 if — following what is indicated in dictionaries — I were pronouncing her name correctly:  Zǐhàn.  She acknowledged that Zǐhàn is indeed the canonical pronunciation as given in lexicographical sources, but that people — including she herself — actually pronounce her name as Zǐhán.  Oh, woe is me!  That sort of blew my mind away.  It's not enough to be scrupulously observant of canonical prescription for pronunciation, I must needs learn another, noncanonical, pronunciation for the 菡 of 子菡's given name.

So I asked 子菡 on what grounds, what basis, and for what reason are you and almost everyone else pronouncing your name as Zǐhán instead of Zǐhàn?  The explanation that she gave blew what was left of my mind away.

Well, says 子菡 (here I'm interpreting and elaborating), few people know the "correct", dictionary pronunciation of 菡, so they just guess — on the basis of the phonophore, which they independently know — that it is hán.

函, without the "grass" radical / semantophore, is pronounced hán and means "include; box; letter", a term that is fairly well known (unlike hàndàn 菡萏, which is known only to the literary minded).

函 occurs as a phonophore in the following Sinographs:

蜬 *kuːm, *ɡuːm 函 *ɡuːm, *ɡruːm 涵 *ɡuːm, *ɡuːmʔ 顄 *ɡuːm, *ɡuːmʔ 圅 *ɡuːm (variant of 函) 菡 *ɡuːmʔ

The MSM (Modern Standard Mandarin) pronunciations of these six characters are respectively gān, hán, hán, hàn, hán, hàn.  If you guessed the MSM pronunciations of these six characters on the basis of their phonophore, you would be right half of the time.  This exemplifies the principle of "rèn zì rèn bànbiān 認字認半邊" ("to recognize a character by recognizing half of the character").  

Zǐhán estimated that this principle works about 80% of the time, which is roughly what John DeFrancis used to say about the phonetic carrying capacity of the phonophores of Chinese characters, although John's analysis was quite sophisticated and based on empirical evidence, such that he was able to distinguish degrees of phonetic carrying capacity of different Chinese characters.  Judging from our experience with 函, I think we need to go way below 50% accuracy for the ability of Sinographic phonophores to convey accurate phonetic information.  This is especially so since 圅 is actually a variant of 函, so we are really only dealing with five characters here, hence two out of five (函 and 涵), or 40%, or perhaps we should say even less, since 函 is itself and is not indicating any other character.

To cap it all off, Zǐhán told me there's another reason why people pronounce her name as Zǐhán rather than Zǐhàn, even if they are literarily or lexicographically learned enough to know that it should be pronounced Zǐhàn (she mentioned this to me at least twice, so it must be true), Zǐhán sounds more feminine than Zǐhàn!  Why, pray tell?  Because Zǐhàn makes one think of "dà nánzǐhàn 大男子漢" ("big man / guy; macho man") and similar expressions evincing masculinity.

Consequently, for all of the above reasons, it is better to pronounce 子菡 as Zǐhán rather than Zǐhàn, no matter what the dictionaries tell you.  And so it shall be:  子菡 is Zǐhán, not Zǐhàn.

 

Selected readings

"Ted Chiang uninvents Chinese characters" (5/13/16) "Is Cantonese a language, or a personification of the devil?" (2/9/14) "The concept of word in Sinitic" (10/3/18) "When intonation overrides tone, part 5" (9/25/20)