Erich Haenisch classified them into sixteen categories including animals (Eje: bull, Yelu: boar), plants (Fodo: willow, Maca: garlic), qualities (Ayan: big, Bayan: rich, Niowanggiyan: green), etc.
For example, the names of brothers of a clan were Ulušun, Hūlušun, Ilušun, Delušun, Fulušun and Jalušun in order of age, where only the initial syllables are changed.
For instance, the Manchu official Tulišen, who wrote a famous travel record, is mistaken for a Chinese man named "Tu Lishen".
The Jurchens and their Manchu descendants had Khitan linguistic and grammatical elements in their personal names like suffixes.
We can find a tendency to leave a space between two syllables of the name of an exalted personage in the Manchu script and to stick them together for common people.
Certain combinations of Chinese sounds that never appeared at native Manchu terms make it difficult to determine syllable boundaries.
The Manchus introduced what is called "Mongolian Sibe Syllable Boundary Marker" in Unicode.
The marker represented as the grapheme of the middle form of letter A is put on a syllable boundary so that we can distinguish Guangying (Guwang'ing) from Guanjing (Guwanging), etc.
The Comprehensive Book of the Eight Manchurian Banners' Surname-Clans (八旗滿洲氏族通譜 Baqi Manzhou Zhizu Tongpu), compiled in the middle 18th century, records many Manchu clan names.