胜 shèng — what the character means in a Chinese name

What 胜 means in a Chinese nameshèng

6,123 real names in the 1.14M-name corpus♂ 5,538 · ♀ 5859 strokesdata & verification

tier B

胜任；胜过。

To be equal to something — and to prevail over it.

1 处原典 · 1 部典籍 · 全部可核

胜残去杀 Overcoming, not defeating

善人为邦百年，亦可以胜残去杀矣。

With good men in charge for a hundred years, cruelty could be overcome and killing done away with.

论语 · 子路篇 · our translation

Here 胜 is to overcome cruelty, not to defeat a rival. It is the heavier sense of the word. 「胜残」是克服残暴，不是打败谁。名字用「胜」，这层的「胜」比「赢」沉。

胜任名胜胜之胜明永胜

In a name

Overcoming rather than winning.

「胜」是克服，不是赢。

1 sourced citation · every line verified character-for-character against a versioned corpus — read or verify the dataset