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Chinese surname - Origin of surnames

Chinese surname - Origin of surnames: Encyclopedia II - Chinese surname - Origin of surnames

Prior to the Warring States Period (5th century BCE), only the royal family and the aristocratic elite could generally take surnames. Historically there was also difference between xing and shi. Xing were surnames held by the immediate royal family. They generally are composed of a nü (女, meaning "female") radical which suggests that they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages. Prior to the Qin Dynasty (3rd century BCE) China was largely a feudal society. As fiefdoms were divided and s ...

Chinese surname: Encyclopedia II - Chinese surname - Origin of surnames

Chinese surname - Origin of surnames

Prior to the Warring States Period (5th century BCE), only the royal family and the aristocratic elite could generally take surnames. Historically there was also difference between xing and shi. Xing were surnames held by the immediate royal family. They generally are composed of a nü (女, meaning "female") radical which suggests that they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages.

Prior to the Qin Dynasty (3rd century BCE) China was largely a feudal society. As fiefdoms were divided and subdivided among descendants, so additional sub-surnames known as shi were created to distinguish between different seniority of lineages among the nobles though in theory they shared the same ancestor. In this way, a nobleman would hold a shi and a xing. After the states of China were unified by Qin Shi Huang, surnames gradually devolved to the lower classes and the difference between xing and shi blurred.

Shi surnames, many of which survive to the present day, generally share twelve paths of origin:

From xing: These were usually reserved for the central lineage of the royal family, with collateral lineages taking their own shi. Of the six or so common xing, only Jiang (姜) and Yao (姚) have survived as frequently occurring surnames.
From state names: Many commoners took the name of their state, either to show their continuing allegiance or as a matter of national and ethnic identity. Common examples include Song (宋), Wu (吴), Chen (陈). Not surprisingly, due to the population size of the peasantry, these are some of the most common Chinese surnames.
From the name of fiefs 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 Ouyangting, 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.
From the names of ancestors: 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 style name would be used. For example, Yuan Taotu took the second character of his grandfather's style name Boyuan (伯爰) as his surname. Sometimes titles granted to ancestors could also be taken as surnames.
From seniority within the family: In ancient usage, the characters of meng (孟), zhong (仲), shu (叔) and ji (季) were used to denote the first, second, third and fouth eldest sons in a family. These were sometimes adopted as surnames. Of these, Meng is the best known, being the surname of philosopher Mencius, for example.
From occupation: These could arise from both official positions, as in the case of Sima (司马), originally akin to "Minister of War". They could also arise from more lowly occupations, as with Tao (陶), meaning "potter" or Wu (巫), meaning "shaman".
From ethnic groups: Non-Chinese peoples in China sometimes took the name of their ethnic group as surname. The best example is Hu (胡), which originally referred to all "barbarian" groups on the northern frontier of China.