Prior to the Warring States Period (fifth century BC), 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 n (, meaning "female") radical which suggests that they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages. Another hypothesis has been proposed by sinologist Lon Vandermeersch upon observation of the evolution of characters in oracular scripture from the Shang dynasty through the Zhou. The "female" radical seems to appear at the Zhou period next to Shang sinograms indicating an ethnic group or a tribe. This combination seems to designate specifically a female and could mean "lady of such or such clan". The structure of the xing sinogram could reflect the fact that in the royal court of Zhou, at least in the beginning, only females (wives married into the Zhou family from other clans) were called by their birth clan name, while the men were usually designated by their title or fief.
Prior to the Qin Dynasty (third century BC) 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 in 221 BC, 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, usually from a/an:
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 () and Yao () have survived as frequently occurring surnames.
Royal decree by the chicago cubs #23 jersey Emperor, such as Kuang ().
State name: 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 (), Wu (/), Chen (/), Tan (/). Not surprisingly, due to the population size of the peasantry, these are some of the most common Chinese surnames.
Name of a fief 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.
Names of an ancestor: 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 () as his surname. Sometimes titles granted to ancestors could also be taken as surnames.
Seniority within the family: In ancient usage, the characters of meng (), zhong (), shu () and ji () were used to denote the first, second, third and fourth eldest sons in a family. These were sometimes adopted as surnames. Of these, Meng is the best known, being the surname of the philosopher Mencius.
Occupation: These could arise from both official positions, as in the case of Sima (/), originally akin to "Minister of War". They could also arise from more lowly occupations, as with Tao (), meaning "potter" or Wu (), meaning "shaman".
Ethnic groups: Non-Han Chinese peoples in China sometimes took the name of their ethnic group as surname.
Distribution of surnames
Province
Surnames
Guangdong
Liang (), Luo (/), Kwong ()
Guangxi
Liang (), Lu (/)
Fujian
Zheng (/), Lin (),Hsia ()
Anhui
Wang ()
Jiangsu
Xu (), Zhu ()
Zhejiang
Mao (),Shen ()
Jiangxi
Hu (), Liao ();
Hubei
Hu ()
Hunan
Tan (/);
Sichuan
He (), Deng (/)
Guizhou
Wu (/)
Yunnan
Yang (/)
Henan
Cheng ()
Gansu
Gao ()
Ningxia
Wan (/)
Shaanxi
Xue ()
Qinghai
Bao (/)
Xinjiang
Ma (/)
Shandong
Kong ()
Shanxi
Dong () and Guo ()
Inner Mongolia
Pan ()
Northeast China
Yu ()
Surnames are not evenly distributed throughout China's geography. In northern
A 1987 study showed over 450 family names in common use in Beijing, but there were fewer than 300 family names in Fujian.
A study by geneticist Yuan Yida has found that of all the people with a particular surname, there tends to be a population concentration in a certain province, as tabled to the right. It does not show, however, the most common surnames in any one province.
The 55th most common family name "Xiao" () appears to be very rare in Hong Kong. This is explained by the fact Hong Kong uses traditional Chinese characters not simplified Chinese characters. chicago cubs #23 jersey Originally, the surname (Xiao) was rather common while the surname (Xiao) was extremely rare, if not non-existent (it is mentioned only sporadically in historical texts). The first round of simplification in 1956 simplified into , keeping / and distinct. However the second-round in 1977, which has long been abolished, merged and into . Despite the retraction of the second round, some people have kept as their surname, so that there are now two separate surnames, and .
Chn (trad , simp ) is perhaps the most common surname in Hong Kong and Macau (romanized as Chan) and is also common in Taiwan (romanized as Chen). Fang (), which is only the 47th most common overall, is much more common in San Francisco's Chinatown in the United States (more often romanized as Fong based on the Cantonese dialect). As with the concentration of family names, this can also be explained statistically, as a person with an uncommon name moving to an unsettled area and leaving his family name to large number of people.
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