78609
I came across this sentence which confused me:

> どう言う苗字を付けようかと思った時,...

I didn't understand how 言う describes a word like 苗字 better. Now I started to
think backwards about it.

So if one was to start with a sentence that had と言う苗字, と言う名前, と言う意味
a「quote」would precede the phrase. If と gets replaced with どう, there obviously
can't be a quote preceding it. However the sentence could have been
「山田」と言う苗字を付けようかと思った時,... → When they were thinking about taking the name
yamada. And now it is → When they were thinking which name to take. The thing
that got me is, that that means the 言う "belongs" more to the どう than the 苗字.

Is it ok to think about it like that?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-15T19:59:28.807
78595
2020-07-16T11:13:12.920
2020-07-15T21:27:31.213
78
36811
question
meaning
Is どう言う a form of 「quote」と言う?
**No** , どういう is **not** a form of 「quote」と言う, as it has been said by A.Ellett
in [a
comment](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/78595/is-%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E8%A8%80%E3%81%86-a-form-
of-quote-%E3%81%A8%E8%A8%80%E3%81%86#comment128696_78595). どういう is _usually
written in hiragana_ and has [a meaning of its own as a single
word](https://jisho.org/search/douiu). It means the same as 「どんな」:

> **どういう** 苗字を付けようかと思った時,...

> **どんな** 苗字を付けようかと思った時,...

> When I thought of **what kind of** surname to give, ...
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-16T11:13:12.920
78609
2020-07-16T11:13:12.920
32952
78595
answer