ABSTRACT
So far this work has discussed at great length the general phenomenon of name tabooing through the centuries and its enormous impact on Chinese people in their history. Of course, it has had and still has an equally important impact on modern historical scholarship as well. In order to be able to use original Chinese sources, the historian needs a full awareness of this phenomenon and its implications, such as the fact that names of people, places and titles were often changed for a shorter or longer period of time because of the practice of name taboos. Knowledge of these changes enables the historian to get more information out of the sources. Thus this chapter begins with a brief typology of the kind of name changes that we encounter in historical evidence. Besides, name taboos can usually be dated very precisely in time, because they were inspired by concrete events, such as the name of an emperor or of his relative. This means that we can also use name taboos to date texts or manuscript copies more precisely. Therefore, the second part of this chapter will be devoted to the use of name taboos in textual criticism.
