In his essay"'Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali, Clifford Geertz argues that our social world is populated not by anybodies. , but by somebodies, concrete classes of determinate per- sons positively characterized and appropriately labeled"(1973: 363). It is this process by which anybodies are converted into somebodies that concerns me here Do men and women become omebodies'in the same way? Are they made equally determinate, positively characterized Although this discussion is based primarily on field research carried out in the Hong Kong New Territories, examples of naming practices have been drawn from other areas of Chinese culture as well. It is difficult to determine the extent to which the patterns described in this paper are indicative of rural China in general. Available evidence suggests that there is considerable overlap between Hong Kong patterns of male naming and those of preliberation Chinese so- ciety and present-day rural Taiwan(see for example Eberhard 1970; Kehl 1971; Sung 1981 Wu 1927). Unfortunately, there have been no studies that specifically examine the differences tween men 's and womens naming, although brief references in martin Yangs study of a Shantung village(1945: 124)and in Judith Stacey's account of women in the People's Republic (1983: 43, 131)suggest that the gender differences discussed here are not unique to Hong Kong In making these statements I do not wish to suggest that there are no substantial differences in ersonal naming between rural Hong Kong and other parts of China. a general survey of per onal naming in China, especially one that takes the postrevolution era into account, has yet This paper draws heavily on ethnographic evidence gathered in the village of Ha Tsuen, a Tsuen share the surname Teng and trace descent to a common ancestor who settled in this region during the 12th century (see R. Watson 1985). For most villagers postmarital residence is virilocal/patrilocal. The Ha Tsuen Teng practice surname exogamy, which in the case of a single-lineage village means that all wiv from outside th ty. These women arrive in Ha Tsuen as strangers and their early years of marriage are spent accommodating to a new family and new community The Teng find this completely natural; daughters, 'they say, are born looking out; they belong to others Patrilineal values dominate social life in Ha Tsuen Women are suspect because they are outsiders. As Margery Wolf points out, Chinese women are both marginal and essential to the families into which they marry (1972: 35). They are necessary because they produce the next generation, yet as outsiders their integration is never complete. Women are economically de pendent on the family estate but they do not have shareholding rights in that estate. Half the village land in Ha Tsuen is owned by the lineage(see R. Watson 1985: 61-72), and the other half is owned by private(male)landlords. Women have no share in this land; they do not own movable property nor do they have rights to inherit it. Few married women are employed in wage labor, and since the villagers gave up serious agriculture in the 1960s, most women are dependent on their husbands paychecks for family income. At the time I conducted my re- search(1977-78)Ha Tsuen had a population of approximately 2500-all of whom are Can tones speakers. naming an infant Among the Cantonese a child ' s soul is not thought to be firmly attached until at least 30 days after its birth. during the first month of life the child and mother are secluded from all but the immediate family. After a month has passed, the child is considered less susceptible to soul loss and is introduced into village life. The infant is given a name by his or her father or grandfather at a ceremony called"full month"(man yueh). If the child is a son, the "full month"festivities will be as elaborate as the family can afford; if, on the other hand, a girl is born, there may be 620 american ethnologist