Q regarding Chinese database use

[sef1029]

How does one go about searching for names in a Chinese/Mandarin database? How are names grouped in a setting where alphabetization isn't relevant? Is there an ordering system that is relevant?

I'm wondering, for instance, how Shen Wei might have gone about searching for Kunlun in the modern era. Also, how easily could one hide a name like Da Qing if one wanted to keep it present in the records but difficult to find? In English, for instance, just changing "Catherine Braun" to "Katherine Brown" would subvert most searchers. What might a clever person do to achieve a similar result with logograms?

Or would something entirely different from a name search be more useful? What?

Thanks for any clues!

Comments

[ariunderscore]

re. strokes, what you mainly need to know is: there's a certain order to how characters are written, which is fairly intuitive after you know some ground rules (and consider that they used to be written with brush and ink and top to bottom).

Once you know these rules, you can easily count strokes even of unfamiliar characters to look them up.

For example 口 has 3 strokes: first the left one, then the one across the top and then down the right side drawn in one go, and last the bottom one.

(my knowledge comes from Japanese, but they imported Chinese writing)

[sef1029]

Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you. Fans are so generous.