Chinese Character Names
The Chinese character used for the Zhuang people has changed several times. Their autonym, "Cuengh" in Standard Zhuang, was originally written with the rare character Zhuàng 獞 (or tóng, meaning "a variety of wild dog").). Chinese characters typically combine a semantic element or radical and a phonetic element. John DeFrancis calls Zhuàng 獞, with the "dog radical" 犭 and a tóng 童 phonetic, an ethnic slur and describes how the People's Republic of China removed it. In 1949, after the Chinese civil war, the logograph 獞 was officially replaced with Zhuàng 僮 (or tóng "child; boy servant"), with the "human radical" 亻and the same phonetic. Later, during the standardization of simplified Chinese characters, Zhuàng 僮 was changed to a completely different character Zhuàng 壮 (meaning "strong; robust").
Read more about this topic: Zhuang People
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