The personal name of the Longqing Emperor, the 13th emperor of China's Ming dynasty, was Zhu Zaiji, although it was later widely recorded as Zhu Zaihou due to a historical transcription error. Contemporary sources, including the Ming Veritable Records and the Korean Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty identified his personal name as Zaiji, while some later Ming and Qing historical works adopted the erroneous Zaihou reading. This mistaken form was subsequently followed by many modern Chinese and Western works.
Name The Longqing Emperor () was the 13th emperor of the Ming dynasty of China. He was born on 4 March 1537 as the third son of the Jiajing Emperor. On 8 June of the same year, his father named him Zhu Zaiji (). In 1539, the Emperor granted Zhu Zaiji the title Prince of Yu (), at the same time he appointed Zhu Zaiji's elder brother Zhu Zairui as heir apparent and his younger brother Zhu Zaizhen the Prince of Jing. Zhu Zaiji was known as the Prince of Yu until his accession to the throne in 1567, after which he was known by his era name "Longqing" () until his death in 1572. According to Shen Defu's (), the Longqing Emperor was recorded as having the courtesy name Shunzhai.
A long-standing alternative claim regarding the Longqing Emperor's personal name (; Míngzi) was that it was Zaihou (). The Veritable Records of Muzong, the official records of his reign, do not record his personal name. However, the Veritable Records of Shizong, the official records of the Jiajing Emperor's reign, record the Longqing Emperor's personal name as "Zaiji". In the epitaph for the official written by the Wanli-era grand secretary , it was also recorded that Chen once explained the meaning of the character ji () in the name of the then Prince of Yu to , the son of Grand Secretary Yan Song, "He was named at birth; the character consists of yuan () and tu (), meaning to stand above the Nine Provinces, which was the ruler's intention". The 1539 Edict on the Investiture of the Heir Apparent and the Enfeoffment of Two Princes (), preserved in the 1548 Zhejiang Provincial Administration edition of the Huangming zhaoling (), explicitly recorded the Longqing Emperor's personal name as "Zaiji", as did the Korean Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty. A person named existed separately at the time; he was the Prince Anhe of Qidong.
Several unofficial histories compiled during the Wanli era (1572–1620) also recorded the Longqing Emperor's personal name as "Zaiji", such as He Qiaoyuan's (), Wu Ruideng's Liangchao xianzhang lu (), and Huang Ming Zhaoling biannian xinshi (). However, the Wanli-era scholar Lu Han's published Zhangzhong yuzhou (), which recorded the Longqing Emperor's name as "Zaihou". This error was subsequently followed by several privately compiled histories, including Ming dazheng ji (), Zhu Guozhen's Huang Ming dazheng ji (), and (). Some privately compiled histories from the early Qing dynasty used both names interchangeably. () recorded "Zaihou" in its annals section, while its treatises section recorded "Zaiji". In Zha Jizuo's (), the Annals of Shizong section recorded "Zaiji", whereas the Annals of Muzong section used "Zaihou". In the officially compiled History of Ming produced by the Qing court, the Annals of Muzong formally adopted the name "Zaihou". The biography of Chen Yiqin in the same work also altered Chen's explanation of the character in the Longqing Emperor's name, changing it from "consisting of yuan and tu" to "consisting of hou (后) and tu (土)", forming the character . Modern Chinese and Western works have largely followed the erroneous "Zaihou" reading. For example, Hu Hansheng's Mingchao diwang ling (), Cao Jinhong's Zhongguo Tongshi (), Luther Carrington Goodrich and Fang Chao-ying's Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368–1644, Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett's The Cambridge History of China, Ann Paludan's Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors: The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial China, and Mote's Imperial China: 900–1800.
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