Méi Wénmǐng 梅文鼏
Style names Ěrbiǎo 爾表 (per the Sìkù 提要) and Ěrsù 爾素 (per his elder brother Méi Wéndǐng’s preface to KR3f0029 ZhōngXī jīngxīng tóngyì kǎo). Native of Xuānchéng 宣城 (Níngguó prefecture, Ānhuī). Birth and death years not securely recorded; flourished in the Kāngxī period (c. 1641–1710s, roughly contemporary with his elder brother).
The third of the Méi family of Xuānchéng — younger brother of 梅文鼎 Méi Wéndǐng and brother of Méi Wénnài 梅文鼐 (the middle brother). All three Méi brothers worked together on calendrical-and-mathematical study, with Wéndǐng the senior figure but with substantive collaboration with the younger brothers especially in the early phases of the Méi family’s mathematical project (Méi Wéndǐng’s Wù’ān lìsuàn shūjì records that the Lìxué piánzhī of 1661 was undertaken jointly by all three brothers under the tutelage of Ní Zhúguān 倪竹冠).
His sole surviving independent work is the ZhōngXī jīngxīng tóngyì kǎo 中西經星同異考 (KR3f0029), in 2 juàn, completed Kāngxī jǐsì (1689) — a comparative-cataloging study of Chinese-and-Western stellar nomenclature, juxtaposing the Chinese Bùtiān gē 步天歌 of Dānyuánzǐ 丹元子 (the canonical Chinese stellar reference of the Suí period) with the Western star catalogs in Ricci’s Jīngtiān gāi 經天該, Schall’s Chóngzhēn lìshū tables, and Verbiest’s Língtái yíxiàng zhì of 1674. The work systematically identifies the stars known in both traditions, the stars known in one but not the other, and the differences in nomenclature-and-position-attribution. The 提要 of the work calls it “the essential thread for the mutual penetration of the Chinese-and-Western two methods” — a strong statement of its value as a foundational reference for Sino-Western astronomical concordance.
Méi Wénmǐng’s broader contribution within the Méi family circle was apparently as the comparative-bibliographic specialist (his ZhōngXī jīngxīng tóngyì kǎo is the most thoroughly comparative of any Méi-family work). He may have served as a research-and-collation assistant on his elder brother’s larger projects.