透過對清代婦女名字的分析，可以約略看到清代婦女的社會地位。天下父母心，為子女取個好名，是天經地義的事。本文的研究範圍是將婦女名字限定在於具有文采的女子身上，這些女子既然受教育，代表著她出身的家庭背景也是文化水準較高的。以此為範圍，研究清代社會對女子的期許，發現這些女子的名字，大量引用了《詩經》《楚辭》的文句典故，便可以印證了為她們命名的人，是有文化水準的。這些命名典故，常見到要求婦工等家庭職責，或是要求女子嫺靜貞潔，以靜態潔淨的香草美人，隱寓了忠於家庭、丈夫的節烈念。清代婦女名字，以花卉草木為名的是大宗，其次為金玉器玩，再次為以德容性格為主的名字，這些性格名字，也是柔美順恭為主，可以見到女性為男子附屬的社會現象。因此清代少有剽悍和男子相較量的婦女名字。至於同姊妹的命名，有類似宗族中男子「字輩譜」的現象，即同姊妹之間的名字，自有其規律性可言；或是和兄弟共用「字輩譜」，只是例子並不多。這種現象，和重視男子的社會現象有關。也有不少家庭姊妹之間的命名，是毫無規律可尋。

Through analyzing women’s given names in Ching Dynasty, we obtained some hints about their social status. Basically, parents in the whole world would want to choose a good name for their child. But there are intrinsic differences among various “good names,” and from which we can sense what the parents’ expectation of the child and the cultural background of the time were. In this study we limited our research subjects to women with literary embellishment. Since those ladies were apparently well educated, they must have been born into families of the upper class of the society. We investigated their names as a clue to surmise the general expectation of people toward their female member in Ching society. Firstly, we found among those given names, a great many was originated form terms found in old verses of Shih Ching (Book of Poetry) and Chu Chih (Elegies of Chu). That indicated whoever named those ladies were highly educated themselves. Secondly, the meaning of the term chosen was either requiring the bearer to faithfully fulfill her family duties or demanding her to be elegant, pure and chaste. Although most terms used didn’t seem much beyond the description of the quality of a tranquil, graceful, unwavering. Immaculate, and fragrant beauty in a parable form of flower or grass, the real intention strongly advocated a doctrine forced onto the named female to be forever loyal to her family and particularly to her husband. Thirdly, we found the most popular female names in Ching Dynasty were names of flowers and other kinds of vegetation, then came the names of precious gold or jade articles, followed by less popular ones of virtues and honor. Those names depicting virtues put emphasis on tenderness, elegance and obedience, which illustrated in such society, the female was expected to play a supporting role or which illustrated in such society, the female was expected to play a supporting role or even just an accessory of the male. Therefore, we don’t find any agile and fierce female names. Finally, there seemed to have so-called “generation character” shared by sisters of some families, following a popular Chinese custom for brothers and male cousins with the same surname sharing one character in their given names. However, in the case of the generation character, females usually had their own, and they rarely shared the character with male family members. That indicated the society generally paid attention to only male offspring. The other extreme was that in fact many families did not even bother to follow any rules or patterns to name their daughters.