In tonal languages, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use.
In contemporary standard Chinese (Mandarin), the tones are numbered from 1 to 4. They are descended from but not identical to the historical four tones of Middle Chinese, namely level (Chinese: 平; pinyin: píng), rising (Chinese: 上; pinyin: shǎng), departing (Chinese: 去; pinyin: qù), and entering (Chinese: 入; pinyin: rù), each split into yin (Chinese: 陰; pinyin: yīn) and yang (Chinese: 陽; pinyin: yáng) registers, and the categories of high and low syllables.
Standard Vietnamese has six tones, known as ngang, sắc, huyền, hỏi, ngã, and nặng tones.
Thai has five phonemic tones: mid, low, falling, high and rising, sometimes referred to in older reference works as rectus, gravis, circumflexus, altus and demissus, respectively. The table shows an example of both the phonemic tones and their phonetic realization, in the IPA.
