The story of the family name 500 words

The Story of Family Name

When it comes to family name, we are all familiar with it. Everyone has his or her own family name, but you may not know that more than two thousand years ago, "family name" and "clan" were two completely different concepts. You may have a surname, but not necessarily a clan. This brings us to the aristocratic system of the Zhou Dynasty.

There were four types of aristocrats in the Zhou dynasty: the son of heaven, the vassals, the dafu, and the shi. The "Son of Heaven" was what we often call the "Emperor", the supreme ruler of the world. But the Son of Heaven could not control so much land! So, the Son of Heaven divided some of the land to some people around him, which were called "vassals". The vassals also had a lot of land to control, so they gave it to the "great physicians". The "Shishi" were less fortunate, as they had no land, but only an aristocratic status.

At that time, only the nobles had "clans". For example, we've all heard of the Chinese idiom story "滥竽充数"? Inside the indiscriminate number of that "Mr. Nanguo", is a nobleman, "Nanguo" is his "clan", his own surname "Jiang Nanguo" is his "clan" and his family name is "Jiang", he is the descendant of "Jiang Taigong". "The word "Nanguo" means the outer wall of a city to the south. In ancient times, "cheng" referred to the wall of an inner city, and "guo" referred to the wall of an outer city. Nanguo" was his fiefdom. Therefore, the "clan" of the nobles was usually their fief.

Later, when the nobility system was abolished, the "clan" slowly died out. Some people took the previous generation's "氏" and used it as their own last name. Now some people with the surname "Guo" are the descendants of Mr. Nanguo!

I didn't realize there was so much to learn about surnames, did you?

There is so much to learn about surnames, right?