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Meaning & History
Means "brilliant noble" in Chinese (貂 zhāo "brilliant", 君 jūn "king, ruler, noble"). This name is the courtesy name of one of the Four Beauties of ancient China, Wang Zhaojun (王昭君 Wáng Zhāojūn), whose given name was Wang Qiang (王嬙 Wáng Qiáng). Born to a prominent family in Baoping Village, Zigui County (in current Hubei Province) in the Western Han dynasty (206 BC–8 AD), Wang Zhaojun was endowed with dazzling beauty with an extremely intelligent mind. She was adept in playing the pipa and also master of the ancient "Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar" – the guqin, go, calligraphy and Chinese painting. She was sent by Emperor Yuan to marry Chanyu Huhanye of the Xiongnu Empire in order to establish friendly relations with the Han dynasty.
It is said that when she left her hometown on horseback to journey north, she began to play sorrowful melodies on a pipa (a round-bodied lute that was later called ruanxian), when a flock of wild geese flying overhead heard the music, looked upon the beautiful woman and forgot to flap their wings, causing them to fall to the ground. From then on, Zhaojun acquired the nickname Luoyan (落雁 Luòyàn), meaning "fells geese" or "drops birds". This description serves as the meaning behind the second pair of characters of the Chinese idiom 沉魚落雁, 閉月羞花 (pinyin: chényú luòyàn, bìyuè xiūhuā), referring to the Four Beauties, which is used to compliment a woman's beauty, meaning one is so beautiful she sinks fish and entices birds to fall, eclipses the moon and shames flowers, (literally "Fish dive/Goose fall, Moon hide/Flower shame").
It is said that when she left her hometown on horseback to journey north, she began to play sorrowful melodies on a pipa (a round-bodied lute that was later called ruanxian), when a flock of wild geese flying overhead heard the music, looked upon the beautiful woman and forgot to flap their wings, causing them to fall to the ground. From then on, Zhaojun acquired the nickname Luoyan (落雁 Luòyàn), meaning "fells geese" or "drops birds". This description serves as the meaning behind the second pair of characters of the Chinese idiom 沉魚落雁, 閉月羞花 (pinyin: chényú luòyàn, bìyuè xiūhuā), referring to the Four Beauties, which is used to compliment a woman's beauty, meaning one is so beautiful she sinks fish and entices birds to fall, eclipses the moon and shames flowers, (literally "Fish dive/Goose fall, Moon hide/Flower shame").