In Chinese writing, a proper name mark (Simplified Chinese: 专名号, zhuānmínghào; Traditional Chinese: 專名號) is an underline

Underline

An underline, also called an underscore, is one or more horizontal lines immediately below a portion of writing. Single, and occasionally double , underlining was originally used in hand-written or typewritten documents to emphasise text...

 used to mark proper name

Proper name

"A proper name [is] a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about" writes John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic , "but not of telling anything about it"...

s, such as the names of people

Chinese name

Personal names in Chinese culture follow a number of conventions different from those of personal names in Western cultures. Most noticeably, a Chinese name is written with the family name first and the given name next, therefore "John-Paul Smith" as a Chinese name would be "Smith John-Paul"...

, places, dynasties, organizations. The related book name mark (Simplified Chinese: 书名号, shūmínghào; Traditional Chinese: 書名號)， indicated by a wavy underline is used to mark the titles of publications or texts.

The proper name mark is rarely used in modern Chinese publications, and the Guillemet (《 》) is more commonly used to indicate titles. It is occasionally used in Taiwan and Hong Kong in school textbooks. However, in scholarly editions of classical Chinese texts, especially vertically typeset texts (where they appear to the left of the text instead of underneath), use of both the proper name mark and the book name mark is common, as they help readers avoid misinterpretations of the text.

For example:

屈原放逐，乃賦。左丘失明，厥有。（司馬遷 《報任安書》）

Qu Yuan

Qu Yuan

Qu Yuan was a Chinese poet who lived during the Warring States Period in ancient China. He is famous for his contributions to the poetry collection known as the Chu-ci...

 was exiled, and thus composed the Li Sao

Li Sao

Li Sao is a Chinese poem dating from the Warring States Period, largely written by Qu Yuan of the Kingdom of Chu. One of the most famous poems of pre-Qin China, it is a representative work of the Chu Ci form of poetry.-Title:The title's meaning has been debated about even in historical times...

. Zuo Qiu

Zuo Qiuming

Zǔo Qīumíng was a court writer of the State of Lu, and contemporary of Confucius during the Spring and Autumn period. The work Commentary of Zuo is traditionally attributed to him. He is also possibly a contributor to Guoyu. One tradition according to Shiji holds that he became blind ....

 (or Zuoqiu) lost his sight, hence there is the Guo Yu

Guoyu (book)

The Discourses of the States or Guoyu is a classical Chinese history book that collected the historical records of numerous states from Western Zhou to 453 BC. Its author is unknown, but it is sometimes attributed to Zuo Qiuming, a contemporary of Confucius...

. (Sima Qian

Sima Qian

Sima Qian was a Prefect of the Grand Scribes of the Han Dynasty. He is regarded as the father of Chinese historiography for his highly praised work, Records of the Grand Historian , a "Jizhuanti"-style general history of China, covering more than two thousand years from the Yellow Emperor to...

, Letter to Ren'an)

[Due to technical limitations, the wavy underline book title mark is represented here with double underline.]

Also, consider the sentence "I come from Germany". In Chinese, using the proper name mark, it would be rendered as "。" (Pinyin: Wǒ láizì Déguó.) The name of the country, in this case Germany, is underlined.

This method of recognizing proper names in text is similar to the English use of a capital letter in proper noun

Proper noun

A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...

s.