What’s in a name? When it comes to tai chi chuan (taijiquan), then the answer is… quite a lot.
Firstly, there’s the issue of how you write it. Occasionally, you will see an attempt to guess at the spelling of the name that makes the mind boggle, such as an email asking if somebody can come to your “thai chee” class, but usually it’s some variation of “tai chi” or “taiji”.
Tai chi was first romaised into English using the Wade–Giles system as “tʻai chi chʻüan”. But English speakers soon abbreviated it to “tʻai chi” and dropped the mark of aspiration. Nowadays, in the UK at least, we tend to use “tai chi” and forget about the “chuan”. Perhaps a better translation would be “tai chi boxing”, but this goes against the image of the art, which is usually practiced as a health exercise, so that’s never going to catch on. There really isn’t much “boxing” going on in most tai chi classes.
Then there’s he newer pinyin romanisation system, which has replaced Wade–Giles as the most popular system for romanizing Chinese. In pinyin, tai chi is written taijiquan. It’s popular to use taiji or taijiquan in English now to also remove any colonialist connotations of the term from a bygone era.
I get that, but I think the written phrase tai chi has slipped so far into the general populations consciousness that a lot of people have no idea what you’re talking about if you write taijiquan. I use tai chi myself.
Step back into the Qing dynasty
Then there’s the issue of when the art was given the name tai chi boxing. Tai chi emerged into public life in the royal court during the Qing dynasty, yet it wasn’t freely called tai chi until after the dynasty ended. If you try and find a written occurrence of the name published before 1912 you’ll draw a blank. There are certainly written documents that claim to be from years earlier that contain the name “tai chi boxing” yet not a single one of them was made public or published before 1912. What happened in 1912? The Qing dynasty collapsed and the new Republican era began.
My best guess as for the reason that this is the case is that Hong Taiji (1592 – 1643), the founding emperor of the Qing dynasty had adopted the name “Taiji”. It’s unclear if this was his personal name or a title, but there was certainly a taboo around using that name because it belonged to an emperor. It therefore became impossible for a marital art to be called “tai chi boxing” without breaking that taboo and suffering the (presumably harsh) consequences. However, once the Qing dynasty fell, the name was back on the market. (Credit to my friend Daniel Mroz for bringing this to my attention).
The taiji symbol
Then there’s the meaning of the name. The name taiji has obvious connections to the philosophical concept of the taiji symbol – the circle with the two fishes representing yin and yang and their constant interchangeable position. One state increase till it exhausts itself leading to the other in an infinite loop.
In Yang style tai chi lineages, the art has long been associated with Taoist ideas, which the taiji symbol is representative of. Chen style seems less Taoist in origin, however, the concept of taiji is a universal symbol, and used throughout all of Chinese thought.
The name taiji can be translated as “supreme ultimate”, which has lead many to conclude that tai chi boxing must have got the name because it was the boxing system par excellence of the Chinese martial arts scene. It is literally, the best! If only!
I wish that was true, but I think it’s just a common misunderstanding, which is perhaps played on as a marketing device in modern times. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be learning the supreme ultimate boxing system, right?
The concept of being a supreme ultimate is more to do with supremely different positions being harmonised. Extreme yang and extreme yin. Polar opposites that work together and find harmony. That’s the real meaning.
In Tai Chi your body moves through position after position – we call these ‘postures’ usually – in the transition between them the body will open and close in a repetitious cycle. Once yang (open) is exhausted the body will move to yin (close) once you’ve reached the extreme position of yin, you move back to yang again, and so on.
The opening and closing is a whole body action. So, you are literally enacting the taiji diagram with your body.
That’s the general idea. Of course, you can break down your body into sections and look at how each one of those opens and closes, there is seemingly no end to the level of detail you can drill down to, but on a basic level your body is always moving from yin to yang and back again, which is the reason for the name of the art – tai chi chuan.
The Tai Chi Notebook 
The taiji symbol
My first inquiry about “T’ai Chi Ch’uan” met the response from a student, “It means the most powerful punch.” Today, this seems like good marketing, but it did not really capture the essence of the art. The supreme ultimate is the standard, abstract dictionary definition. Even the supreme ultimates is better, since, as you point out, this refers to the relationship of yin and yang. I prefer to refer to them as the Great Extremes, also an acceptable dictionary definition of taiji that is often overlooked.
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Thanks for great writing on such fundamental topics. I think every long-term student and certainly every teacher has to grapple with these topics at some point.
Like each of us, I have a little different circumstances and a bit of a different perspective, so my reflections led to different courses of action over the years.
Romanization
Chinese (Mandarin) was most of my teachers’ first language, so when I started promoting their classes and later teaching my own, I wanted English speakers to have close pronunciations and understand meanings. Initially, I chose the Yale romanization system as the easiest to use, written, tai ji chuan. If you haven’t heard of the Yale romanization system, yeah, that’s the problem. Almost no one uses it. I fought this battle for about a decade.
Concurrently, I was studying Chinese with friends from Taiwan learning pronunciations through the Bopomofo system, developed around 1910 as sort of a script alphabet for Chinese grades schools. Later, as I looked at Pinyin, I found that it had taken Bopomofo and substituted Latin letters in place of script. After learning a handful of pronunciation rules, not a steep learning curve, it does get English speakers closest to correct pronunciation, IMO.
Though developed in China, Pinyin also has been officially adopted by Singapore and Taiwan and unofficially in many Chinese conclaves. Taijiquan is the Pinyin spelling. Occasionally, if writing to a general audience, I write, Taijiquan (T’ai chi ch’uan), once as an introduction, but most of my students have been experienced martial artists or taiji practitioners already, so it’s a non-issue.
Step back into the Qing dynasty
I’ve heard the Emperor Hong Taiji theory before. Certain prohibitions, like five-toed dragons and repetitions of nine objects, like architectural features, were reserved for the Emperor. This theory does go right along with those traditions. However, there were initially unpublished writings written in the Qing Dynasty that give us insight into how practitioner referred to their art. Both are available on Paul Brennan’s website.
Yang Banhou in his manuscript, dated to about 1875, titled Taiji Fa Shou, or Taiji Method Explained. Each chapter of Yang’s manuscript explored the role of yin and yang, taiji, in his martial art. Yang gives a glimpse of how they referred to the art, “The Thirteen Dynamics [Postures] solo set flows on and on ceaselessly, and hence is called Long Boxing [Chang quan]. You may spread out and gather in as you will, but by no means allow yourself to stray from the taiji concept.” [Brennan’s translation]
In Li Yiyu’s classic writings to his student Hao He (Weishen), dated 1881, the famous first section was titled Shan you Wang Zongyue Taijiquan Lun, or Shanxi Wang Zongyue – Taijiquan Treatise and a following section was called, “Taijiquan, a Brief Introduction.” Li also called the form the Thirteen Postures and the art, Chang quan, though the term was used differently than in modern times.
Perhaps, because Li’s was a private letter, he did not feel encumbered by the prohibition of the use of Taijiquan as a designation, whereas Yang Banhou, having been in and around Beijing palaces, was a little more circumspect. It is clear that the principle of taiji was integral to the practices of the art, at least, from the time of Yang Luchan, if not Chen Qingping, and not a later, 20th-century, addition.
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I agee one hundred per cent,I first began studying tai chi chuan in 2010. I practice the Yang 103 everyday. I chose it as am antidote for half a lifetime of hard martial arts. My instructor was a Neil Bradley, and he used those terms. But the term taiji predominated. So it was enjoyable reading your article.
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