argrr101 Posted August 2, 2015 at 02:29 PM Report Share Posted August 2, 2015 at 02:29 PM I know that you can drop the 名字 if you are being informal, but I was wondering if there was some grammatical explanation for why you need the 名字? How is this different (if at all) from 你姓什么？And why does that sentence not need anything after the 什么? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weiwuji Posted August 2, 2015 at 03:31 PM Report Share Posted August 2, 2015 at 03:31 PM it's more of formality, rather than grammatical reasons. in an informal conversation, you could even start a question saying, "你是？" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
陳德聰 Posted August 2, 2015 at 09:07 PM Report Share Posted August 2, 2015 at 09:07 PM 叫 means "to call" and in this case "to be called". 你叫什麼名字 means "what name are you called by?" 姓 means "to be surnamed". 你姓什麼 is fine without anything afterward because you wouldn't need to say "by what surname are you surnamed?" It's not a grammatical issue it's just a lexical issue. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
argrr101 Posted August 3, 2015 at 02:42 AM Author Report Share Posted August 3, 2015 at 02:42 AM Okay so since 叫 is "to be called" and not "to be named" you would need to clarify that you are looking for the name that you are called, whereas for 姓 it is only ever referring to one thing so it does not need to be clarified. Does that sound correct? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
陳德聰 Posted August 3, 2015 at 05:33 AM Report Share Posted August 3, 2015 at 05:33 AM Sounds about right. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest123 Posted August 3, 2015 at 02:49 PM Report Share Posted August 3, 2015 at 02:49 PM By the way, 你叫什么? can mean "Why are you shouting?" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yorin Posted August 3, 2015 at 03:52 PM Report Share Posted August 3, 2015 at 03:52 PM How is this different (if at all) from 你姓什么？And why does that sentence not need anything after the 什么? As 姓 means both "to be surnamed ..." (verb) and "family name" (noun), the complete sentence would be 你姓什么姓? While technically correct, I think you can see why this would be perceived as a very redundant and thus unusual thing to say, while "你叫什么名字?" lacks that degree of awkwardness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New Members hanola Posted August 4, 2015 at 11:07 AM New Members Report Share Posted August 4, 2015 at 11:07 AM I'd have a question about word-order connected to this subject. Is both: 1) 你名字叫什么? and 2) 你叫什么名字? correct?. Is maybe 1 better? Cause I read that the noun after the verb would rather be used for things such as in: 这叫什么名字? what is this (thing) called? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yifeng Posted September 27, 2015 at 02:29 AM Report Share Posted September 27, 2015 at 02:29 AM "的" should be inserted into sentence 1: 你的名字叫什么？ This sounds more nature. 你的名字叫什么？ and 你叫什么名字？ are correct equally and can be used alternately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Messidor Posted September 30, 2015 at 06:41 AM Report Share Posted September 30, 2015 at 06:41 AM if you really want to know the syntactic explanation... 什么 is a type of interrogative pronoun that can be used both adjectively and nominally ---- nominal in 你叫什么 and adjective in 你叫什么名字. The "part of speech" of 什么 is determined by the existence (or not) of 名字, but not the other way round. Pragmatically, the longer the sentence the more formality it may represent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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