A large number of the names of historical personages have been preserved in Dunhuang documents and provide a wealth of information for researching the historic figures of Dunhuang, as well as an important basis for dating and collating handwritten Dunhuang manuscripts. The handwritten manuscripts this research focuses on were created intermittently, with records of some figures spanning a period of up to 60 years. The appellations used to indicate these people varied with changes in their social status: the same person may have had several completely different names that were written in popular graphic forms,substituted by homophonic characters, or written in abridged forms due to the variance in literacy between scribes. Furthermore,because these historical records were catalogued based on topic rather than individual case, information relevant to the same individuals was scattered into seemingly unrelated segments. Therefore, establishing the correct identities of these personages and collecting the various appellations by which they were known is an important precondition for advancing research into the prominent figures of Dunhuang’s history. To this end, this research traces the different variants of certain appellations found in Dunhuang documents and analyzes the change in form that occurs based on homophonic substitution, name abridgement, differences in secular and religious names, and character antonomasia.
