1. Introduction

Terms of address played a fundamental role in premodern forms of both “mediated” and “immediate” Chinese interpersonal interaction (Goffman 1967), and they continue to be regarded as important in modern times. Chinese historical forms of address have a number of interrelated characteristics worth noting:

• The premodern lexicon of Chinese address terms has an extensive size;
• This extensive size is due to a) the intrinsic relationship between…