Bickering Butterflies in Pleco
Most learners of Chinese know about Pleco, the popular Chinese dictionary. One of its great features (especially for long-term serious learners of Chinese) is that you can have multiple dictionaries within Pleco. This can provide wider coverage and a lot more depth. But every now and then, this feature can potentially be the source of confusion.
Check out this Pleco entry for “butterfly” (蝴蝶):
Confused? It’s like the dictionaries are arguing amongst themselves.
PLC: It’s 蝴蝶.
CC: Actually, both 蝴蝶 and 胡蝶 are OK.
GF: DO NOT WRITE 胡蝶!!!
ABC: Whatevs. You can write 蝴蝶 or 胡蝶.
My Chinese co-workers say that 胡蝶 can be a woman’s name, but not a butterfly. Not sure what the source of contention is here. (If you know, feel free to share in the comments!)
I believe it’s an old/archaic way of writing “蝴”, it got standardized and used as “蝴蝶”. There are many characters that have different/old ways of writing in the past – I meant before 新中国, that got standardized and unified later on. (But yeah, 胡蝶 can also be a woman’s name and that’s actually the name of an iconic Chinese actress in 20th century.)
康熙字典：
《正字通》洪吾切，音胡。蝴蝶，本作胡。详蝶字注。