Chapter 426 — The Third-Day Bath
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 1 of 4
When the child's informal name reached Song Cen, he gave a cold snort in the direction of Zi'ai Peak and said, "Only girls are ever called 'Yuan Jie'; who ever heard of a boy called 'Yuan Ge'? Go and tell him the child's name is to be 'Dong Ge'."
Zi'ai Peak smiled and assented. She returned and reported this to Song Yan, who acted as if he had heard nothing and went on calling the child "Yuan Ge." The servants of Yi Zhi Hall naturally followed Song Yan's lead and said "Yuan Ge," while those of the Yingzhen Duke's household said "Dong Ge" in Song Cen's presence and "Yuan Ge" in Song Yan's.
Chen Yanzhou, ever mischievous, laughed and said, "Normally, the younger the child, the more such names ward off evil and misfortune. But with 'Yuan Ge' and 'Dong Ge' flying about, one slip of the tongue and there'll be trouble. I say call him 'Eldest Young Master' and have done with it. Yuan Heng is the eldest legitimate grandson of the Yingzhen Duke's household, and his great-grandfather is gone, so the title is his by right."
Zi'ai Peak seized the chance to stir the pot. "Then 'Eldest Young Master' it is—it saves no end of trouble."
Someone, eager to curry favor, reported this to Song Yan. His face betrayed nothing, yet he rewarded the old woman with two taels of silver.
At that, the serving women of the household understood which way the wind blew, and began addressing Yuan Heng as "Eldest Young Master," one after another.
Outsiders who heard of it were puzzled. "Then what is your family's Second Young Master to be called now?"
The household servants laughed. "He is still Second Young Master."
The outsiders could not help laughing. "So the nephew has climbed above his uncle's head."
"Hasn't the Second Young Master yet to marry? Once he does, it will be time enough to raise his style of address another rank."
As a rule, the last to hear of gossip is the one it concerns.
By the time Song Han learned of it, the matter had spread through the whole capital and been told as a joke for a long while.
Even so, the formal name Song Yan had chosen for the child, "Mingyi," lasted but a single night—at the third-day bath rite the next day, Wang Ge, newly promoted to Junior Director of the Qianqing Palace, came in person to the Yingzhen Duke's residence to deliver an imperial decree: the Emperor had bestowed upon Yuan Ge the name "He."
Song Yan and Song Cen were astonished beyond measure.
Only in the imperial house, to avoid taboo characters, were such obscure words ever used for naming.
The Emperor was naming Yuan Ge entirely by the rules of the imperial family. And the Emperor was not a man given to fussing over trifles. He could not even recognize all of his own grandsons—how should he think to bestow a name on Yuan Ge? What was more, naming a child had always been the business of the family's elders; before Song Cen had so much as spoken, the Emperor had overstepped and done it for him. It was an unparalleled favor, to be sure, but it had come so bafflingly out of nowhere that it left a man uneasy at heart.
Song Yan received the decree and, together with Song Cen, invited Wang Ge into the small reception hall for tea.
Song Cen asked Wang Ge, "However did His Majesty come to think of bestowing a name on our child?"