Chinese surname


Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Greater China, Korea, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Chinese names begin with surnames, unlike the Western tradition in which surnames are given last. Around 2,000 Han Chinese surnames are currently in use, but the great proportion of Han Chinese people use only a relatively small number of these surnames; 19 surnames are used by around half of the Han Chinese people, while 100 surnames are used by around 87% of the population. A report in 2019 gives the most common Chinese surnames as Wang and Li, each shared by over 100 million people in China. The remaining eight of the top ten most common Chinese surnames are Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Wu and Zhou.
Two distinct types of Chinese surnames existed in ancient China, namely xing ancestral clan names and shi branch lineage names. Later, the two terms were used interchangeably, and in the present day, xing refers to the surname and shi may refer either the clan or maiden name. The two terms may also be used together as xingshi for family names or surnames. Most Chinese surnames in current use were originally shi. The earliest xing surname might be matrilinear, but Han Chinese family name has been exclusively patrilineal for a couple of millennia, passing from father to children. This system of patrilineal surnames is unusual in the world in its long period of continuity and depth of written history, and Chinese people may view their surnames as part of their shared kinship and Han Chinese identity. Women do not normally change their surnames upon marriage, except sometimes in places with more western influences such as Hong Kong. Traditionally Chinese surnames have been exogamous in that people tend to marry those with different surnames.
The most common Chinese surnames were compiled in the Song dynasty work Hundred Family Surnames, which lists over 400 names. The colloquial expressions lǎobǎixìng and bǎixìng are used in Chinese to mean "ordinary folks", "the people", or "commoners".

History

Chinese surnames have a history of over 3,000 years. Chinese mythology, however, reaches back further to the legendary figure Fuxi, who was said to have established the system of Chinese surnames to distinguish different families and prevent marriage of people with the same family names. Prior to the Warring States period, only the ruling families and the aristocratic elite had surnames. Historically there was a difference between ancestral clan names or xing and branch lineage names or shi. Xing may be the more ancient surname that referred to the ancestral tribe or clan, while shi denoted a branch of the tribe or clan. For example, the ancestors of the Shang had Zi as xing, but the descendants were subdivided into numerous shi including Yin, Song, Kong, Tong and others. The distinction between the two began to be blurred by the Warring States period. During the Qin dynasty, name usage was standardised, commoners started to acquire a surname or xing, and the shi also became xing. By the Han dynasty, families only had xing or xing-shi. The great majority of Han Chinese surnames that survive to modern times have their roots in shi rather than the ancient xing.
In modern usage, xing is the surname, but the word shi survives as a word to refer to the clan. The term shi may be appended to the surname of a person; for example, a man with the Zhang surname may be referred to as Zhang-shi instead of his full name. It is used in particular for the paternal surname of a married woman, therefore in this case shi means maiden name, which a Chinese woman would continue to use after marriage.

''Xing''

The ancient xing were surnames held by the noble clans. They generally contain a "female" radical, for example Ji, Jiang, Yao and Yíng. This is taken as evidence that they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages. The character for xing itself is composed of a female radical and the character for "give birth". Xing is believed to have been originally transmitted through women of noble birth, while noble men have shi.
Scholars such as Edwin G. Pulleyblank, however, are unconvinced by the matriarchy theory of Chinese surnames due to a lack of independent evidence. An alternative hypothesis has been proposed, suggesting that the use of female radical in xing may have arisen from the clan exogamy system used during the Zhou dynasty. In ancient times, people of the same xing were not permitted to marry each other and a woman married into an aristocratic clan needed to be of a different name. Based on observation of the evolution of characters in oracular scripture from the Shang dynasty through the Zhou: the 女 radical seems to appear during the Zhou period next to Shang sinograms indicating a clan or a tribe. This combination seems to designate specifically a female and could mean "lady of such or such clan". The structure of the xing sinogram could reflect the fact that in the royal court of Zhou, at least in the beginning, only females were called by their birth clan name, while the men were usually designated by their title or fief.
While people of the same xing were not permitted to marry each other, those with the same shi can. By the Han dynasty when everyone had xing and the surname was transmitted paternally, the practice continued, but it had changed to marriage between families of men on the paternal side being prohibited, but not on the maternal side.

''Shi''

Prior to the Qin dynasty, China was largely a fengjian society. As fiefdoms were divided and subdivided among descendants, so additional sub-surnames known as shi were created to distinguish between noble lineages according to seniority, though in theory they shared the same ancestor. In this way, a nobleman would hold a shi and a xing. Xing, however, was more important than shi.
The difference between xing and shi became blurred in the Spring and Autumn period starting with women. For example: Chunqiu referred to Duke Xuan of Lu's consort Lady Mujiang, who bore the clan name Jiang, as Jiangshi 姜氏, " Jiang shi".
After the states of China were unified by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC, surnames gradually spread to the lower classes. Most surnames that survive to the present day were originally shi.

Origins of Chinese surnames

According to the chapter on surnames in the Han dynasty work Fengsu Tong - Xingshi Pian, there are 9 origins of Chinese surnames: dynasty names, posthumous titles, ranks of nobility, state names, official positions, style names, places of residence, occupations, and events. Modern scholars such as Kiang Kang-Hu proposed that there are 18 sources from which Chinese surnames may be derived, while others suggested at least 24. These may be names associated with a ruling dynasty such as the various titles and names of rulers, nobility and dynasty, or they may be place names of various territories, districts, towns, villages, and specific locations, the title of official posts or occupations, or names of objects, or they may be derived from the names of family members or clans, and in a few cases, names of contempt given by a ruler.
The following are some of the common sources:
  1. Xing: These were usually reserved for the central lineage of the ancient royal family, with collateral lineages taking their own shi. The traditional description was what were known as the "Eight Great Xings of High Antiquity", namely Jiāng, Jī, Yáo, Yíng, Sì, Yún, Guī and Rèn, though some sources quote Jí as the last one instead of Rèn. Of these xing, only Jiang and Yao have survived in their original form to modern days as frequently occurring surnames, while few others, like Ji, Yun and Ren, survived in forms without the female radical: 吉, 云 and 任.
  2. State name: Many nobles and commoners took the name of their state, either to show their continuing allegiance or as a matter of national and ethnic identity. These are some of the most common Chinese surnames in the present day such as Wú, Zhōu
  3. Name of a fief or place of origin: Fiefdoms were often granted to collateral branches of the aristocracy and it was natural as part of the process of sub-surnaming for their names to be used. An example is Di, Marquis of Ouyang Village, whose descendants took the surname Ouyang. There are some two hundred examples of this identified, often of two-character surnames, but few have survived to the present. Some families acquired their surname during the Han dynasty from the Commandery they resided in.
  4. Names of an ancestor: Like the previous example, this was also a common origin with close to 500 or 600 examples, 200 of which are two-character surnames. Often an ancestor's courtesy name would be used. For example, Yuan Taotu took the second character of his grandfather's courtesy name Boyuan as his surname. Sometimes titles granted to ancestors could also be taken as surnames.
  5. Seniority within the family: In ancient usage, the characters zhong, shu and ji were used to denote the second, third and fourth eldest sons in a family. For the first son meng was meant for a child born to a secondary wife or a concubine, while bo indicated a child born to the primary wife. These were sometimes adopted as surnames. Of these, Meng is the best known, being the surname of the philosopher Mencius.
  6. Official positions, such as Shǐ, Jí, Líng, Cāng, Kù, Jiàn, Shàngguān, Tàishǐ, Zhōngháng, Yuèzhèng, and in the case of Shang's "Five Officials", namely Sīmǎ, Sītú, Sīkōng, Sīshì and Sīkòu ;
  7. General occupations, as with Táo, Tú, Bǔ, Jiàng, Wū and Chú.
  8. Titles of nobility, such as Wáng, Hóu, Xiàhóu and Gōngsūn
  9. Royal decree by the Emperor, such as Kuang, bestowed amongst other gifts to Kuang Yuping, previously Fang Yuping, by Emperor Xiaozong of Song, upon making Yuping's daughter an imperial concubine.
  10. Ethnic and religious groups: Non-Han Chinese peoples in China sometimes took the name of their ethnic groups as sinicized surnames, such as Hú, Jīn, Mǎn, Dí, Huí and Mùróng. Many Hui Muslims adopted the surname Ma, an old Chinese surname, when they were required to use Chinese surnames during the Ming dynasty as it sounded close to the first syllable of Mohammad; it was also fitting for some of those who were caravaneers as the word means "horse".
  11. Famous people: A couple of surnames originate from famous people in Chinese history. For example, the surname 李 originates from Lao Tzu. This probably means that people today with the surname 李 are mostly descendants of Lao Tzu, including the Tang emperors.
Many also changed their surnames throughout history for a number of reasons.
  • A ruler may bestow his own surname on those he considered to have given outstanding service to him; for example, the surname Liu was granted by emperors in the Han dynasty, Li during the Tang dynasty, and Zhao from the Song dynasty.
  • Others, however, may avoid using the name of a ruler, for example Shi was changed to Shuai to avoid conflict with the name of Sima Shi. Others may modify their name in order to escape from their enemies at times of turmoil, for example Duanmu to Mu, and Gong to Gong.
  • The name may also be changed by simplification of the writing, e.g. Mu to Mo, or reducing from double or multiple character names to single character names, e.g. Duangan to Duan.
  • It may also have occurred through error, or changed due to a dissatisfaction with the name.