Matteo Ricci
1552—1610
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Names Across Cultures / Collection 01
The Sinologist Atlas
An index of names and lives at the crossroads of China and the world. Every name form is separated from its origin story; every public dossier shows what the sources establish and what remains unknown.
112people
12trail stops
5transformations
8interest routes
A 12-stop reading trail
Follow the field as its evidence changes.
This cohort follows the source dossier exactly. It is a history-of-method route, not a ranking.
- 01利玛窦Matteo Ricci
Missionary and institutional formation
- 02雷慕沙Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat
Missionary and institutional formation
- 03理雅各James Legge
Missionary and institutional formation
- 04沙畹Édouard Chavannes
Missionary and institutional formation
- 05内藤湖南Naitō Konan
Classical sinology
- 06伯希和Paul Pelliot
Classical sinology
- 07高本汉Bernhard Karlgren
Classical sinology
- 08李约瑟Joseph Needham
Classical sinology
- 09费正清John King Fairbank
Postwar China studies
- 10狄百瑞Wm. Theodore de Bary
Postwar China studies
- 11霍克思David Hawkes
Postwar China studies
- 12彭慕兰Kenneth Pomeranz
Global and material turns
Five transformations
The history is also a history of changing evidence.
- 01 · 16th–18th c.
Reading Chinese directly
Missionaries increasingly worked from Chinese texts and scholarly networks rather than distant report.
- 02 · 1814 onward
The university discipline
Chairs, libraries, journals, and language training made sinology a professional field.
- 03 · Early 20th c.
Manuscripts, sound, and objects
Dunhuang, oracle bones, archaeology, and historical phonology changed the evidence base.
- 04 · After 1945
Modern China studies
Modern history and social science joined the older philological tradition.
- 05 · 1980s–today
China in connected worlds
Global, gender, material, environmental, and imperial approaches broadened the field.
Search the index
112 lives, two levels of evidence.
Rich dossiers open as pages. Seed records stay in this index until identity, usage, and sources meet the publication threshold.
38 records shown · 74 seed records available
Martino Martini
1614—1661
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Philippe Couplet
1623—1693
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Nikita Bichurin
1777—1853
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat
1788—1832
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Stanislas Julien
1797—1873
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
James Legge
1815—1897
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Thomas Francis Wade
1818—1895
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Herbert A. Giles
1845—1935
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Édouard Chavannes
1865—1918
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Naitō Konan
1866—1934
This is a native Japanese name written in kanji, not an adopted Chinese name; source-level usage remains unreviewed.
Richard Wilhelm
1873—1930
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Paul Pelliot
1878—1945
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Henri Maspero
1883—1945
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Marcel Granet
1884—1940
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Bernhard Karlgren
1889—1978
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Arthur Waley
1889—1966
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Paul Demiéville
1894—1979
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Joseph Needham
1900—1995
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Miyazaki Ichisada
1901—1995
This is a native Japanese name written in kanji, not an adopted Chinese name; source-level usage remains unreviewed.
John King Fairbank
1907—1991
Bestowed by Liang Sicheng; documented in biographical accounts of the Fairbanks in China.
Wm. Theodore de Bary
1919—2017
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
A. C. Graham
1919—1991
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Jacques Gernet
1921—2018
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Michael Loewe
1922—2025
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
David Hawkes
1923—2009
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Denis Twitchett
1925—2006
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Kristofer Schipper
1934—2021
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Jonathan Spence
1936—2021
Bestowed by Fang Chao-ying; the account is preserved in a published interview.
Mark Elvin
1938—2023
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Patricia Buckley Ebrey
United States
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Peter C. Perdue
United States
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Timothy Brook
Canada
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Kenneth Pomeranz
United States
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Martin Kern
Germany / United States
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Roel Sterckx
Belgium / United Kingdom
The Chinese-language form is recorded in the editorial dossier; source-level usage and origin remain unreviewed.
Stephen Owen
1946—2026
Self-chosen; directly explained by Owen in a recorded interview.
Roger T. Ames
Literature, philosophy, religion, and material culture
Ames explained the name and its Analects allusion in an interview.
Traditions in comparison
Six institutional paths, no national stereotype.
These are reading orientations, not fixed traits. Scholars moved between languages, universities, archives, and political contexts.
10 indexed records
France & francophone Europe
Philology, catalogues, Buddhism, Dunhuang, and multilingual sources.
35 indexed records
Britain & North America
Classics, literary translation, dynastic history, and area studies.
2 indexed records
Germanic & Nordic
Grammar, historical linguistics, philosophy, and comparative method.
1 indexed records
Russia
Borderlands, Mongolia, Tibet, Central Asia, and diplomatic knowledge.
12 indexed records
Japan
Deep premodern foundations, periodization, institutions, economy, and literature.
18 indexed records
Connected traditions
Scholars and methods that cross national schools and institutional borders.
This week in the atlas
One record, read slowly.
The weekly feature rotates through published dossiers without manufacturing new facts or thin pages.
Read the dossier安乐哲
Origin documented
Roger T. Ames
Ames explained the name and its Analects allusion in an interview.
Open dossierSource-first
Claims point to visible sources; group citations are not disguised as proof of name provenance.
How names travelTeach with the trail
A print-friendly classroom sequence with prompts, vocabulary, and a source exercise.
Open classroom packRead the field guide
A compact guide to sinology, Chinese Studies, and the five major methodological turns.
Open field guideContribute carefully
Corrections are welcome when they include a specific record, claim, and traceable source.
Suggest a correctionDataset decision: the structured corpus remains an editorial asset, not a public dataset, while 74 seed records still lack person-level source depth. The searchable interface is public; bulk export is intentionally withheld.