Chinese surname (possibly) translation help.

January 15, 2010 8:30 PM

Looking for some Chinese (or Japanese) surname translation help. I have this old lock for an chest and it has two pairs of Chinese characters that were hand engraved on it (pics inside). I'll be damned if I can make out more than one of the characters (昌）, but because of the arrangement I suspect they're two family names. And I'm guessing Chinese because none of the characters are common in the Japanese names I know. But it's all wild speculation on my part and I'll happily be corrected. Any ideas about what it is and where it came from is welcome.

Here's pic 1 and pic 2.

posted by Ookseer to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

Best answer: This is actually a 成语 (chengyu), a four character idiomatic phrase. The characters are 五世其昌, and according to this baidu page (Chinese), it's a wish that your descendants will be prosperous for 5 generations, and it used to be something one said to newlyweds.

So I guess you've got a bridal chest, or a least a bridal lock. Sweet!
posted by jweed at 8:44 PM on January 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Fantastic! (I thought it was a wedding thing, but for entirely wrong reasons. Looks like a little knowledge got me exactly nowhere.)
posted by Ookseer at 10:14 PM on January 15, 2010