Surnames mainly come from four aspects:
First, from the land and surname, the son of heaven is the person who gives the surname Ming. The Yellow Emperor created twelve surnames for his twenty-five sons. The history of Tao Tang was later sealed in Liu Di, and his descendants took Liu Wei's surname.
The second is to take the place of birth as the surname. The Yellow Emperor was born in Shouqiu and grew up in Jishui, so he took Ji as his surname.
Third, surnames are titles and official positions. Wang Shaozi of Chuzhuang became an official doctor, and his descendants took the official as their surname.
The fourth is to get a surname because of something or other reasons.
Tian, the prime minister of the Han Dynasty, was old and went in and out by car, so he was called "the prime minister of the car". Later generations took the car as their surname. Ge is an ancient surname, originally from Langya counties, and later moved to Yang Du, where there used to be a Ge, and then moved to another Ge. Therefore, when there were more people surnamed Ge, they called them Zhuge to show the difference, and from then on, there was Zhuge's compound surname.
Due to the development of tribes and the doubling of population, the names of surnames have gradually increased. A surname can be divided into many surnames, and a surname breeds more surnames, so surnames are not fixed. In fact, the unification or basic stability of surnames began in the Han Dynasty. Shortly after Qin destroyed the six countries, Han unified the world. As an important symbol of maintaining the patriarchal clan system of the Zhou royal family, the system of distinguishing surnames also died with the complete collapse of the royal family. At this point, China people's surnames are combined into one, not surnames, surnames, or both. Actually, they all take male surnames instead. This shows that future generations are descendants of male surnames, just as Gu said in the book Knowledge of Japan in the Ming Dynasty: "Since the Warring States Period, people have taken their surnames as their surnames, and all surnames since the Yellow Emperor have died." "Surnames have been mixed since Taishigong", and surnames have become a bond to maintain tradition and a symbol to unite clans. Therefore, respecting and honoring ancestors has become a traditional virtue of the Chinese nation for thousands of years, and it is also a guarantee for safeguarding the reunification of the motherland. It's hard to imagine a China person becoming a patriot if he doesn't even love and respect his tenants and his parents.
Today, foreigners from China who have migrated to other places for hundreds of thousands of years are still obsessed with their motherland, ancestral home and ancestors, and often come to China to seek roots and worship their ancestors. In their genealogy, there are clear records. For example, the genealogy of Harada, a descendant of Liu Bang in Japan, reads: "The lineage of Emperor Gaozu, which strictly exists, is hard to cry, but how can it be obtained? I miss the country of China and arrived in the Han Dynasty. " It's been more than 2400 years, and it's been a long time since I confessed to the thirteenth and fourteenth dynasties. "During this period, the two countries had ups and downs, but they all envied the prosperity of the Han Dynasty. They have always been homesick for me, the old country ruled by Emperor Gaozu, and are eager for the land not to be banned. So they published the genealogy, based on which they could do whatever they wanted, and reported their remaining virtues to Emperor Gaozu. "
According to legend, the earliest origin of surnames is related to the totem worship of primitive people. Clan tribes not only worship totem as a god, but also regard it as the unified clan name. In primitive tribes, totem, clan name and ancestor name are often the same. Over time, the name of totem has evolved into the symbol of all members of the same clan-surname. There are many legends about the evolution of totem into surname. According to textual research, the monarch of Yelang Kingdom is the king of bamboo, and the subjects take bamboo as their totem, and their surname is bamboo. According to historical records, there were foxes and snakes in Jin, dogs in Han, wolves and deer flags in Three Kingdoms and leopards in Three Kingdoms. Through these strange names and surnames with the same names as animals and plants, such as Luo, tiger, ant, cow, sheep, bird, dragon, bamboo, dragon, tea and chrysanthemum, we can vaguely see the indelible historical imprint of totem worship on the origin of surnames.
The formation of surnames is not only closely related to totems, but also closely related to women. Archaeological data show that there are less than 30 surnames in the bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty, but most of them come from women, such as Jiang, Yao, Si, Ji, Wa, maid, pregnant, concubine, kindness and win. Not only ancient surnames are related to the word "female", but even the word "surname" itself comes from the female side, which is probably the characteristic product of matriarchal clan system. Women are in a dominant position in production and life, and group marriage is practiced. Brothers and sisters can marry. Under this system, children only know their mothers, not their fathers. Therefore, there are many stories circulating in the myth that "a saint without a father was born in heaven". Many ancient surnames came from the female side, which shows that our ancestors experienced the traces of matriarchal clan commune.
The origin of surnames, according to historical records, is recorded in Guoyu in the pre-Qin period that "the Yellow Emperor became Ji Shui and Yan Di Cheng, so the Yellow Emperor became Ji and Jiang". Zhou Yu recorded that "I, Ji Min, fell from the sky". This shows that surnames are appellations that represent races with the same blood. It is a regulation of the marriage system in Zhou Dynasty that people with the same surname are not allowed to marry. "Men and women have the same surname, but they are born the same" (Zuo Zhuan was published for twenty-two years), and "The same surname is not married, and evil is not born" (Jin Opera in Mandarin). The ancients knew for a long time that marriage between close relatives would produce bad offspring. In order to distinguish the similarities and differences between male and female surnames and decide whether to get married, it is very necessary to indicate surnames in female appellations. It can be seen that the role of surnames in ancient times is mainly "heterogeneous" and "heterogeneous marriage".
In the development of ancient clans, the title of "teacher" was derived. Legend has it that when the Yellow Emperor ruled the world, there was already a "famous soil". The generation of surnames was the largest and most frequent in the Zhou Dynasty. In the early years of the Zhou Dynasty, in order to control the conquered vast areas, the vassals were enfeoffed on a large scale. And the descendants of these vassal States all take the country name as their surname. In addition, similarly, the vassal states enfeoffed the domestic doctors of Qing Dynasty, and the descendants of the doctors took the enfeoffed country as their surname. Since then, various forms of surnames have emerged, and the number of surnames far exceeds the number of surnames. However, only aristocrats have surnames, while the poor have no surnames, and surnames have become a unique symbol of aristocrats. As for aristocratic women, no matter how they are called, they should follow their surnames, which reflects the authority and rigor of the ancient feudal patriarchal clan system in China. By the Warring States period, earth-shaking changes had taken place in society, and the old aristocrats declined and some of them became slaves. This shows that there is no need for aristocratic families to exist.
The system of different surnames was used until the end of the Warring States Period. By the Qin Dynasty, the old aristocracy collapsed, the feudal patriarchal clan system in the Western Zhou Dynasty basically ended, and the old clan and surname system was also eliminated. In the Western Han Dynasty, there was little difference between surnames. When Sima Qian wrote Historical Records, he simply confused surnames. "Since Taishigong, surnames have been mixed. This record was called' Zhao' in Qin Shihuang and' Liu' in Emperor Gaozu, and the same is true." (Gu Lu) Since then, China's surname has been combined with his surname, either his surname or his surname is his surname. People use their surnames, which is simple and convenient, and there is no distinction between high and low. So civilians also have surnames from no surnames to surnames.
Zhang, Wang, Li, Zhao, Qian, Sun … We all have our own surnames. How did these surnames come into being?
In ancient three generations, surnames and surnames were not the same thing. Surnames are derived from surnames. Since the Han Dynasty, surnames have been mixed. In modern China, most of our surnames were handed down from generation to generation thousands of years ago. According to their sources, they can be roughly divided into 12 categories:
1) Take the surname as the surname. Surnames were produced as symbols of clans and tribes during the clan commune period, and some descendants directly inherited them as surnames. In matriarchal clan society, the mother is the surname, so many surnames were beside the female word at that time. Such as: Ji, Jiang, Yan, Yao and so on.
2) Take the country name as the surname. As we are familiar with the vassal States in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period: Qi, Lu, Jin, Song, Zheng, Wu, Yue, Qin, Chu, Wei, Han, Zhao, Wei, Yan, Chen, Cai, Cao, Hu and Xu, these have become common surnames today.
3) Name the surname after the city. A city is a fief, which is allocated by the emperor and the prince to ministers of the same surname or the opposite sex. Some of their descendants or people living in these fiefs will continue to use their names. For example, the scooter was divided into a fief in the Soviet Union (now west of Linzhang County, Hebei Province), and its descendants were surnamed Su. According to statistics, there are nearly 200 surnames with Yi as their surname. Due to the long history, some compound surnames no longer exist.
4) Take the name of the township or pavilion as the surname. This kind of situation is rare. Today's common surnames are Pei, Lu, Yan, Hao and Ouyang.
5) Take the place of residence as the surname. Among these surnames, there are many compound surnames, generally with the words Qiu, Men, Xiang, Lu, Li, Ye, Guan, etc., indicating the place of residence in different environments.
6) Take the words or names of ancestors as surnames. There are many surnames in this article. According to statistics, there are five or six hundred surnames, including nearly 200 compound surnames. For example, Zhou Pingwang's illegitimate child, Lin Kai, was handed down from the Woods. In the Song Dynasty, the son of Dai Gong filled the stone, and Sun took the word of his grandfather as his surname. In the Han Dynasty, he changed his father to Huangfu.
7) Take the second as the surname. A family takes the surname in the order of brothers. For example, the eldest brother is called Bo or Meng, the second brother is called Zhong, the third brother is called Uncle, and the fourth brother is called Ji. Descendants follow their surnames, indicating the order in the clan. However, there are exceptions: Father Zhuang and Brother Zhuang's Duke Lu Zhuang were originally the harmony of Zhong. Because he committed the crime of regicide, his descendants changed their names to Meng or.
8) Take the official position as the surname. Such as Stuart, Sima, Sikong, Shi Si and Scott. But we can also distinguish some surnames from official surnames, such as Ji, Jane, Cang, Jun and Chu.
9) Take technology as the surname. Such as witches, fortune tellers, potters, craftsmen, butchers, etc.
10) The surnames brought by the integration of ancient ethnic minorities into the Han nationality.
1 1) takes posthumous title as the surname.
12) avoid changing one's surname because of giving.