Chinese Character Names in First Frost: What 温以凡, 桑延, 霜降, and 败降 Really Mean

First Frost (难哄, Nán Hǒng) became Netflix's #1 Chinese-language drama in 2025 with a story about two people named Wen Yifan and Sang Yan. International audiences pronounced the names phonetically and moved on. Chinese audiences read the names as arguments — compressed philosophical positions about who these characters are and what the drama is claiming about them.

Chinese names do more work than English names. They're chosen, not inherited; weighted, not accidental. Parents agonize over single characters. Classical books of names (起名辞典, qǐmíng cídiǎn) still sell by the millions. A name is meant to carry the shape of a person's fate.

Here's what the names in First Frost are actually doing.

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How Chinese Names Work: A Primer

A Chinese name has two parts: 姓 (xìng), the family name, and 名 (míng), the given name. The family name comes first, the given name after. There are only a few hundred family names in circulation; given names are effectively infinite because they're constructed from the tens of thousands of characters in the language.

The Weight of Each Character

A given name is usually one or two characters. Each character is chosen for:

• Meaning — what the character signifies on its own
• Sound — how it pairs with the family name phonetically
• Radical — the visual element of the character (often tied to element theory: metal, wood, water, fire, earth)
• Generational character (字辈, zìbèi) — a character shared by everyone in a generation of a traditional family
• Cultural resonance — what classical poetry, philosophy, or mythology uses the character

A chengyu for a name that lives up to its promise is 名副其实 — the name matches the reality. When Chinese parents name a child, they are making a claim about who they hope that child will become. 名副其实 is the hope that the child grows into the claim.

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温以凡: Warmth That Insists on Being Ordinary

温以凡 (Wēn Yǐ Fán) — the heroine's name in full. Three characters, each doing something.

温 (Wēn) — The Family Name

温 literally means warm. It's also a Chinese family name with a long history, found across multiple dynasties. As a name character, 温 carries associations with warmth of temperament, gentleness, and the classical virtue of 温良 (wēn liáng) — warm and kind.

For a woman whose drama-long emotional arc is about warmth concealed by frost, the family name is a thesis statement. Whatever she becomes, she was born warm.

以 (Yǐ) — The Grammatical Hinge

以 is a function word. It means "using," "by means of," "in order to." In a name, it's rarely chosen for meaning — it's chosen as a graceful connector between the family name and the second name character.

But the grammatical hinge is not neutral. The name 温以凡 reads almost as a sentence: warmth, in the form of... ordinariness. The 以 positions 凡 as the manifestation of 温. It's a name that says: my warmth shows up as something unremarkable.

凡 (Fán) — Ordinary, Common

凡 means ordinary, common, of this world (as opposed to celestial or sacred). It's not a flashy character. It doesn't reach for greatness.

Naming a daughter 凡 is a quiet choice. Most parents reach for aspirational characters — 美 (beautiful), 慧 (wise), 雅 (elegant). 凡 says: may she be regular; may she be spared greatness.

The Full Meaning

温以凡 reads as: Warmth, shown through ordinariness. It's a deeply protective name — a name that asks the world to leave this child alone. A name that has already survived the kind of childhood she ended up with might be called ironic. A more charitable reading: the name is the promise her mother failed to keep, and the drama is about Wen Yifan reclaiming it. She is warm. She is ordinary. She deserves the ordinary warmth the name once promised her.

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霜降: The Nickname That Names the Wound

Wen Yifan's nickname 霜降 (Shuāngjiàng, Frost's Descent) is the 18th of China's 24 solar terms — we decoded its full cultural weight in our solar term guide to 霜降.

Here, one point matters: nicknames in Chinese are never neutral.

The Nickname Tradition

A Chinese nickname (绰号, chuòhào, or 外号, wàihào) is often given by someone who sees a person differently than their given name assumes. Parents give the given name based on who they hope the child will be. A nickname is given by a friend, a classmate, or a lover — someone who sees who the person actually is.

Why Sang Yan Calls Her 霜降

Sang Yan's nickname for Wen Yifan is an act of correction. Her given name says ordinary warmth. The world's treatment of her taught her to hide that warmth under frost. Sang Yan's nickname sees both — the warmth (she is 温) and the frost (she has become 霜降) — and names the whole person.

In Chinese romance tradition, the lover who nicknames you accurately has already declared themselves. Sang Yan never has to say I see you. The nickname is the seeing.

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桑延: The Mulberry That Extends

桑延 (Sāng Yán) — the hero's name in full. Two characters, both quietly doing work.

桑 (Sāng) — The Mulberry Family

桑 is the mulberry tree. As a family name, it's old but uncommon — not among the top hundred Chinese surnames. The mulberry carries heavy cultural baggage: it's the tree whose leaves feed silkworms, the foundation of the Chinese silk industry for five thousand years.

In classical literature, the mulberry is often the tree at the edge of the village — a familiar, homely, productive presence. The phrase 桑梓 (sāngzǐ, mulberry and catalpa) is a classical euphemism for one's hometown.

Naming the Sang family after the mulberry tree gives the family — and the author Zhu Yi's broader fictional universe — a quality of rootedness. The Sangs are from somewhere. They belong to a place.

延 (Yán) — Extension, Continuation

延 means to extend, prolong, continue. It's a character often chosen for first-born sons or for children parents hope will carry the family forward.

In Sang Yan's case, the character is especially loaded. He is the older brother of Sang Zhi (桑枝, "Sang Branch") — the heroine of Hidden Love. Their names are deliberate: 桑延 (Sang, extended) and 桑枝 (Sang, branch). The siblings are the mulberry tree continuing and the mulberry tree branching. They are the same tree, and Zhu Yi's two dramas are two different views of its shape.

The Full Meaning

桑延 reads as: The mulberry continues. It's a name that carries continuity, family, rootedness — everything Wen Yifan was denied. When she enters his life, she is stepping into a family tree that has kept extending itself. The drama never says this out loud. It doesn't have to. The name says it.

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败降: The Gaming Handle That Confesses Everything

Sang Yan's gaming handle is 败降 (Bài Jiàng). We noted the pun in the solar term article — 败降 literally reads "defeated and surrendered," but the second character 降 is also the second character of 霜降. So the handle secretly means defeated by Shuāngjiàng. Defeated by her.

Here, the pun deserves a closer look.

The Culture of Chinese Online Handles

Chinese gaming and social media handles (网名, wǎngmíng) are a minor literary art form. Users choose characters for aesthetic, for joke, for hidden reference, for emotional signal. A good handle is a compressed autobiography.

Why 败降 Is a Good Handle

败降 works on at least three levels:

• Literal level: a self-deprecating gamer name, "Defeated and Surrendered" — the kind of ironic loser-signaling that's popular in Chinese gaming culture
• Romantic level: "Defeated by Shuāngjiàng" — a confession encoded in the name, readable only to someone who knows Wen Yifan's nickname
• Philosophical level: the word 降 means both to descend and to surrender. Sang Yan's name says: I went down to her level; I gave up trying not to love her. Both are true.

Wen Yifan sees the handle long before she understands it. That's the point of a good Chinese pun: it does its work whether or not the recipient knows what's happening. The handle 名副其实 — the name matches the reality — describes Sang Yan's actual state of mind long before he ever admits it out loud.

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The Sang Family Universe

Zhu Yi's dramas (Hidden Love and First Frost) are built around one fictional family — the Sangs. Three characters connect the two shows:

• 桑延 (Sāng Yán) — the older brother, hero of First Frost
• 桑枝 (Sāng Zhī) — the younger sister, heroine of Hidden Love
• 段嘉许 (Duàn Jiāxǔ) — Sang Zhi's love interest, Sang Yan's best friend

The siblings' names — 延 (extend) and 枝 (branch) — tell you exactly what the shared-universe conceit is doing. Both dramas are about the same tree. 延 is the main trunk continuing; 枝 is the branch growing sideways. Together, they make a complete mulberry.

Duan Jiaxu's name (段嘉许) is even more layered — 段 (duàn) means section or segment, 嘉许 (jiā xǔ) means to commend, to approve of. Loosely: the segment that approves. He is the outside observer who sees and affirms both siblings. In the fictional ecology of Zhu Yi's universe, he's the branch from another tree that grafts onto the mulberry and stays.

This level of naming craft is characteristic of good C-drama writing. None of it is required to enjoy the shows. All of it is there for the audience that chooses to look.

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Why This Matters for Understanding the Drama

First Frost's character names are not decoration. They're doing quiet argumentative work throughout the drama:

• 温以凡 names the wound and the potential together — warmth covered by ordinariness, ordinariness that was supposed to be protection and ended up being camouflage
• 霜降 is the correction nickname — a lover's name for someone their parents' name no longer describes
• 桑延 positions the hero inside a family tree — rootedness Wen Yifan has never known, which is part of what she is being invited into
• 败降 is the pun that confesses the whole romance in two characters — Sang Yan lost to her the moment they met
• The Sang siblings (延 / 枝) turn the two dramas into a single cultural artifact — one tree, two views, a shared mulberry

Chinese names carry the weight that Chinese parents choose to give them. The names in First Frost were chosen by author Zhu Yi with clear intent — every character is in service of the story she wanted to tell. Understanding that doesn't just deepen the drama. It reveals a principle of Chinese storytelling: names are not labels. Names are plot.

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Continue exploring: For the full cultural weight of Wen Yifan's nickname, see our solar term guide to 霜降. For the chengyu that describe this couple's arc, see our 8 idioms every First Frost fan should know.

Featured Chinese idioms: 名副其实 — The name matches the reality, 举世闻名 — Famous throughout the world, 风华正茂 — In the full bloom of youth. See our Chinese proverbs hub and browse all 1,000+ Chinese idioms.