Qiū (surname)


Qiu is an East Asian surname. It is common in mainland China and is also one of the most prominent surnames in Taiwan, as well as in the Sichuan and Fujian provinces in the South China region. As well as being a surname, the character also means "mound, dune, or hill". A less common surname is, pronounced the same in Mandarin but differently in Cantonese and Hokkien.
丘/邱 also appears in Korea, where they may be transliterated as:구 Koo, Gu, Ku.
The surname also appears in the Philippines from immigrants from the south of China. It was anglicized as:Cu or Kuh
丘/邱 ranks 151st in the Hundred Family Surnames, and is very common in Luoyang, Henan or Wuxing, Zhejiang. 秋 is common with Taiwanese aboriginals, but is otherwise rare, ranking 237th. 邱 is a very rare surname in South Korea, with census records noting a distribution of less than 2000 with the name.

History

The surname has several historical origins:
  • In 1046 BC, King Wu of the Zhou dynasty overthrew the Shang dynasty with the help of his adviser, Jiang Ziya. Jiang's clan later settled in the Fufeng County of Shaanxi, where they took the name of the then-capital, Qiu, as their surname. Their descendants bore this surname until the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor in the Qing dynasty, when some adopted the written form 邱 to distinguish it from the name of Confucius. However, the change was mostly adopted by Hokkiens while the Hakkas generally refused. Many Hakkas who refused the change were then prosecuted by the Qing government. It was only after the fall of the Qing dynasty and establishment of the Republic of China in 1912, that some members of the Qiu family reverted to their ancient surname Qiu
  • In the early Zhou dynasty, King Wu awarded Cao Xie, the descendant of Zhuanxu, the land of Zhu and established a state there. During the Spring and Autumn period, there was a senior official in the state named Qiu Ruo, and his descendants have taken Qiu as their surname since then.
  • An official named Zuo Qiuming in the Lu state in the Spring and Autumn period lived in Zuo Qiu. And his descendants took the last part of the place name as their surname. In the pre-Qin period, most of the Qiu families lived in the Shandong area. After the Qin and Han dynasties, the Qiu families gradually moved to the southern areas. And most of them were big families to the south of the Yangtze River. The Qiu families entered Taiwan in the early Qing dynasty and Qiu has become one of the popular surnames in the country.
  • Another sect came from the Qiudun clan of the Wuhuan, who changed their clan name to Qiu when they became sinicized during the Southern and Northern Dynasties
  • Zhou dynasty's Ji clan changed their surname to Qiu in the early Zhou dynasty.

Notable people with the surname

邱

秋

Unknown