Khitan names are the personal names of the Khitan people which ruled the Liao dynasty (907–1125) in ancient China and Kara-Khitan Khanate (1124–1218) in Central Asia. A nomadic Mongolic people, the Khitans have been extinct, making research on their cultures difficult. Currently, the Khitan language has largely not been deciphered, and the presence of 2 different writing systems - the Khitan large script and the Khitan small script, make research more difficult. The problem is compounded by the fact that most of the Liao history were recorded in written Chinese such as History of Liao, and transliteration into Chinese characters are not always standard even in modern days, much less in ancient days when the pronunciation is different as Chinese is logographic.
Research have shown that an aristocratic Khitan man, if one disregards the family name or clan name such as Yelü, may have four distinct personal names:[1] [2]
The two names in Khitan can be joined by placing the Khitan courtesy name before the Khitan nickname.:[3] For first-born sons, the nickname is a variant of his father's Khitan courtesy name. This patronymic practice is similar to that observed in some Mongolian names with whom the Khitans are distantly related.
Due to lack of better alternatives, currently Khitan names are transliterated alphabetically based on the pinyin spelling of the most common transliteration into Chinese characters.