What are the meanings of the surnames and first names of the ancients?

"Name" is the first business card for every modern person to come to this world. Whenever a newborn is born, only by choosing a good name can the hospital apply for a birth certificate and the household registration management department register.

Speaking of naming, many people know that the names of modern people are different from those of the ancients. For example, people's names now include surnames and first names. But in ancient times, "surname", "surname", "name" and "word" had different meanings.

Surname: from expressing maternal blood to expressing paternal blood.

"Surname" has always indicated the inheritance of blood relationship. In matriarchal clan society, people usually know their mothers but not their fathers, so "surname" is used to indicate the intergenerational transmission of matriarchal blood relationship. People of the same tribe have the same female ancestor. This is why the oldest surnames in China often have the word "female", such as Jiang, Gui, Ji, Ying, Yi and so on.

After entering the patriarchal clan society, the original way of tracing ancestors by maternal blood naturally changed to tracing ancestors by paternal blood, so the "surname" originally used to distinguish different matriarchal clans began to be used on the paternal line and has been used ever since.

Take the Yellow Emperor as an example. His surname is Ji. If he is in matriarchal clan society, it means that his mother, mother's mother and mother's mother can be traced back to the end. These ancestors all have the same surname, which is "Ji"; However, the era when the Yellow Emperor lived was obviously a patriarchal society, so the information we can get is that his father, his father's father and his father's father are all surnamed Ji.

It should be noted that in ancient society, their surnames were not necessarily the same even in the same paternal blood system. For example, as mentioned above, the surname of the Yellow Emperor is Ji, but fourteen of his twenty-five sons have established their own surnames.

The Yellow Emperor has twenty-five sons and fourteen surnames.

Historical records? Biography of five emperors

Stone: a symbol of once prominent status.

"Shi" and "surname" have the same long history. With the improvement of productivity, there are more and more people with the same surname, and within the tribes with the same surname, there are ways to distinguish smaller ethnic groups with "teachers" as the mainstay. As a result, there were more and more surnames, so that by the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there were more than 600 recorded surnames, while there were only 23 contemporary surnames according to ancient research. Yuan Tingdong said in "Random Talk on Ancient Appellations":

"The original surname should generally be the title or symbol of each clan, or it can be the title of the male leader of the clan."

Yuan Tingdong's Random Talk on Ancient Appellations

Judging from the existing historical data, at least in the era of the Yellow Emperor, the way of distinguishing people by surnames already existed, and one of its main functions was to express people with the same surname with considerable status and status. As we all know, the Yellow Emperor is Xuanyuan, just like Shennong and Sima Qian in Historical Records? Daughters of Shushan (the mother of Emperor Zhuan Xu), Chen Feng (the mother of Yao) and Tu Shanshi (the mother of the founding monarch of Xia Dynasty) mentioned in Biography of Five Emperors.

The ancient tradition of calling men by their surnames and women by their surnames.

What is often overlooked by modern people is that in the textual records that can be verified, in the Spring and Autumn Period, the Warring States Period and previous historical periods, men usually use surnames, while women use surnames to distinguish human dignity. Jiang Ziya, for example, is often written as "Lv Wang" in ancient literature, because although his surname is Jiang, he is Lu; Qu Yuan, a famous doctor in Chu State, surnamed Mi [mǐ], took Qu as his surname because his ancestors called him Qing. Similarly, Shang Yang, surnamed Gongsun, was named "Shang Yang" because the king of Qin named him the monarch of the commercial land. Also surnamed Jiang, only Lu is the surname, so it is called.

Because women had few opportunities to participate in social activities at that time, they only needed to know their surnames, so that they would not marry their surnames. Therefore, before marriage, people usually use surnames plus surnames, such as Qin Jinggong's daughter and the mother of King Zhao of Chu (that is, the parents who won).

After marriage, you add the name of your country or your husband's family before your surname. For example, the hostess of "The Warlord of the Fire Play" praised her, and her surname was Si. Because she was in the harem of the praised American monarch before being praised by the United States and dedicated to Zhou Youwang, when she came to Zhou Youwang, she was called "praise". Usually only families or individuals with considerable social status will have a "surname" to identify themselves.

Since the Warring States period, due to the continuous sinking of power, the phenomenon that Confucius said "the ceremony collapses and the music is bad" has become more and more serious, and more and more emerging families have begun to use surnames to show their identity as a symbol of their own families. Slowly, surnames have become more and more common, even replacing the role of a few surnames in the past and becoming available to everyone. That is, in this process, surnames and surnames gradually merged, no longer playing a separate role in distinguishing men and women and status. Everyone has his or her own surname. After Qin and Han dynasties, the new usage of surnames tended to be stable, and many original surnames directly became new surnames, which have been used ever since. No wonder Gu concluded in the Record of the Day:

"Since the qin dynasty, people take the surname. Calling a person by his last name will kill him every week. "

Gu's Record of the Day

The elders call their names, and the younger ones boast.

Solved the confusion of surnames, and then naturally talked about names. I believe many friends will wonder when watching costume dramas, especially historical dramas. Why do many people call this person "Liu Bei"? The husband of White Snake is clearly called "Xu Xian". Why is his sister full of "China people"?

This is actually not difficult to explain. Because the names we understand today, in the ancients, only represent the "name", not including the "word" in the names of the ancients. In other words, the names and characters of the ancients were also divided. "Yili" records:

"If the son is born in March, the father will name him."

ceremony

In other words, when the ancients were born for three months, they were named by their fathers. Men reach the age of 20 and women reach the age of 15. Anyone who has read a book, whether male or female, will have his own words.

"Male twenty, crown word." When a woman agrees to get married, it is a word. "

Book of rites? Qu Lishang "

It is more common for men to have words, while women have words, which are often ignored by us intentionally or unintentionally. For example, we are familiar with Wang Zhaojun, whose real name is Wang Qiang. Cai Wenji, a talented woman in the Three Kingdoms period, was named "Cai Yan" with the word "Yuexi", and so on.

The name is taken by the elders and basically will not change; Most of the characters are self-painted, and they can be changed by using them. The reason why Chinese characters were added to the bar mitzvah ceremony was because the ancients considered that since then, there was another "social person" in the family, and "name" was inconvenient to call everywhere in social occasions, so they used "word" as the new name of their peers or younger generations. On the one hand, it is to "respect the name" because the name is taken by the elders; On the one hand, it is also for the convenience of taboo.

In the recent fire, Lan forgot his machine, perhaps out of provocation. From the beginning, he didn't say "not jealous" well, but he only said "Wei Ying! Wei Ying! " In the eyes of the ancients, it is very impolite to call people by their first names unless they are very close peers. Of course, people need it for the plot, so I won't say much here.

At this point, we probably know that names are used to address elders, while words are used to address peers and younger generations. However, Bian Xiao suddenly thought of a problem. Since the "word" used by peers only appeared after the rite of passage, and the "name" was given to the elders, how should ancient children address each other when playing together? Welcome to express your opinion in the comment area ~