The register rules: Wǔxíng

Evidence dossier 277 — Wǔxíng. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.

At a Glance

• Canonical form: Wǔxíng
• Original script: 五行
• Pantheon: Chinese
• Convention: pinyin with tone marks — tones shown, ǖ kept distinct from u
• False forms on record: 1
• Contested forms: none attested
• Series: The Canonical Register, No. 277 of 287

The Evidence

Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The name is attested as 五行, as Shangshu, Hongfan (The Great Plan) and Huangdi Neijing record. On the evidence, it means "Five phases". The canonical transliteration is Wǔxíng.

Exhibit 2 — the preserved marks. i → í (Stress on i). Each is verifiable against the sources named in the attestation.

Exhibit 3 — the flattened form. The plain form wuxing is not false — it is a fallback, and the register is exact about what that means. In systems that cannot carry diacritics (legacy databases, older tooling, parts of the address-bar pipeline) the flattened form is the accepted vehicle, and the rulebook names it explicitly as the final rung of the fallback hierarchy: full restoration first, circumflex where attested, macron-only by the academic standard, an attested variant, and only then plain ASCII.

What the fallback status forbids is promotion: wuxing may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. Every mark it drops — i → í — is a fact the sources recorded. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.

Exhibit 4 — struck from the record: Wuxing. Origin: the publisher compromise — older books and hurried websites that print the "English equivalent" as if it were the name itself. Grounds: every substitution here (í→i, ǔ→u) is a romanization of convenience, not an attested spelling — it teaches the reader to guess, not to read.

Exhibit 5 — the physical record. The textual foundation of Wǔxíng appears in the Shangshu's Hongfan chapter, transmitted through Warring States and Han manuscript traditions. The Mawangdui tomb library preserves early medical manuscripts that apply the five phases to diagnosis and treatment, while the Huangdi Neijing became the canonical medical synthesis. Han dynasty lacquerware, bronze mirrors, and tomb murals display the color-direction correspondences of the five phases. Unlike a deity, Wǔxíng has no temple, but its logic is inscribed across the material culture of state ritual, medicine, and calendrical science.

Exhibit 6 — the continuing record. Wǔxíng is the hidden scaffolding of much that looks merely 'Chinese' on the surface. The five flavors, five colors, five notes, five grains, and five directions all derive from it.

The Convention's Own History

Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: pinyin with tone marks — tones shown, ǖ kept distinct from u. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.

The Protocol's Position

Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.

The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.

The Verdict

Case closed on Wǔxíng: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form wuxing rides as the sanctioned fallback — and stays in that lane. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /sites/wuxing/ holds the canonical form.

The docket for this ruling: 1 false form ruled against, Wuxing first on the docket; 1 preserved mark verified: i → í; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 9 cited sources — Shangshu, Hongfan (The Great Plan), Huangdi Neijing, Huainanzi.

The Register Continues

The register holds 287 entries like this one — each temple with its own ruling. Read the temple's founding dispatch for the story, its Restoration File for the philology, its Resonance File for the industries, or the whole archive end to end.

Continue the register — previous entry: Wújí (read it) · next entry: Xiān (read it).

The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.