Dear Adrian,
The character 'Zhong' means 'middle'.
Thus, 'Zhong Guo', means "[The] Middle Kingdom" (China).
If we take the name 'Ye Zhongsan', 'Ye' is the surname, while 'Zhongsan' literally means
"Third Middle [Son]".
Have you ever seen the old "Charlie Chan" mystery programs? Among the characters was "Number One Son", etc.
Also, Chinese is a very old, and very complex language. One example is that there are so many styles of calligraphy.
By comparison, Hebrew is as old if not older (ca.3200-3400 years old), but we have Ancient Hebrew script, also called 'proto-Canaanite' (but 'Canaanite' never developed as a language; the script was adopted by us and by the Philistines, and then became the basis for all the Western alphabetic languages, such as Greek, Latin, etc.; but how can one have a 'proto-' without the object it is 'proto' to?).
'Modern' Hebrew in 'Assyrian Square Script', was adopted when we were vassals of the Assyrian Empire, ca.750-700 BCE (or over 2700 years ago! How's that for 'new'?!).
Until the late 2nd Temple Period (Our 2nd Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, 1950 years ago [But don't worry, dear Giovanni; I don't hold it personally against you!
], the old script was still used, but only to write the Tetragrammaton (the four letter name of G-D, mispronounced by the Witnesses as 'Jehovah'
), on scrolls otherwise written in the 'new' script. So, essentially, it was replaced by the Assyrian square script at least 2500 years ago. But see: only 2 scripts.
Chinese has a number of styles of Zhuanshu (Archaic script), as well as Kaishu ('Standard' script), Lishu (Clerical script, mainly used for monumental inscriptions), Caoshu (Running, or Grass script, used mainly for artistic compositions such as poetry, prose and calligraphic work), Xingshu (sorry, I don't know how to translate this one. Me bad.
), and Xingkaishu (a combination of Kaishu and Xingshu, but see above. I don't know how to describe this one either.).
A MUCH more complex language than Hebrew, and there are layers and layers of complexity and meaning IN the language; I've just touched on 'fonts' in effect.
Best,
Shabbat Shalom,
Joey
