Historically, in order to ascend to the throne, Wu Zetian once named herself "Wu". "Qi" is a new word created by Wu Zetian herself, which means "the sun and the moon are in the sky, and the light is covered by heaven and earth".
In Old Tang Shu and New Tang Shu, the strange phenomenon of place name change appeared in Wu and Zhou Dynasties. According to the Records of Old Tang Dynasty, on the eve of Wu Zetian's change of Tang Dynasty to Zhou Dynasty and her independence as emperor, all the places with the word "Hua" were renamed, such as Huayuan, Huazhou, Huayin, Huating, Huarong and Jianghua, and the word "Hua" was removed, but the original name was changed back after the reset. Even Mount Huashan in Xiyue was also called "Mount Tai" in the Wu and Zhou Dynasties. ?
An important factor in changing place names is "taboo for those who avoid respect". Whenever a place name is repeated with the name of an emperor, it is necessary to avoid renaming it. It is clearly recorded in the Book of the New Tang Dynasty that Huazhou County was renamed "Taizhou" at that time because of "avoiding Wu taboo". ?
In this way, Wu Zetian's name should have a word "Hua". "Hua" means to shine in ancient times. "Hua" is essentially the same as the word "Qi" created by Wu Zetian later. She named her son Hong, Xian and Dan, which is also a derivative of the word "Hua". "?
The ancients generally named their names according to their class. Wu Zetian's father's three brothers were named Shi Leng, Shi Rang and Shi Yi respectively, while her two half-brothers, one called and the other called, were named according to class, which shows that Wu Zetian should also be a "Yuan" generation. "Yuan Wah" means the beginning of light and peerless youth, which is more similar to the word "Qi" she later took. It can be inferred that Wu Zetian's real name should be "Wu".