A Passage to China (走近中国) - Chinese Family Names

Name not proper his words not accepted, his words not accepted he can not achieve anything.
Confucius

Every one in the world has a name, whether a personal given name or the family name. A name is not only a simple sign; it has much to do with the culture, heritage and history underlying the name. It is known that the family is the basic cell of society and ancestral clans are genealogical groups. In human history, emperors, kings, generals, ministers, or common people, each is rooted in genealogical relations and none of them goes beyond the social network of blending and mingling of clans. The history of clans and families, a history veined with blood and genealogical relations, reflects their origins, culture and achievements and thus carries traces of human civilization. That history is the epitome of human society. This chapter aims at the study of Chinese names, including family names and personal given names, in a hope to shed light on the interrelations between family names and personal given names on the one side and culture and history on the other for a better understanding of the names and culture and the history in which the family name and given name exist.

The family name is the first sign for human beings in Chinese society and it is also a group sign for genealogical and hereditary relations of clans and families. China is one of the first counties that began to use family names in this way in the world and its history can be traced back as early as 5,000 years ago, a time of primitive matriarchal society. 5,000 years ago the Chinese people believed that every clan originated from a natural object or from animals or plants and that if the matriarch of the clan contacted the sun, the moon, a star or any plant or animal, she world become pregnant and give birth, that belief brought primitive man into the practice of totemism and the totemic object was believed to be the ancestor of the clan. The totem was not only held in respect but also regarded as important evidence of keeping the relations of the clan. Different totems meant different clans and this object or sign of the clan, as time went on, evolved into the origin of the clan name. Those who lived within the same clan all came from the same matriarchal ancestor and thus all were named after the clan mother. The first person who rose the ides that the Chinese family name was related with totemism was related with totemism is the American archaeologist and ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-- 1881) in his book Ancient Society. The development from totemic society to the society of clans that was characterized with the same totemic clan name marks the first milestone of Chinese family names in history, or the birth of family names.

The practice that the same clan members coming from the same matriarchal mother had the same family name left its traces in Chinese character meaning “family name”, a Chinese classical book, Explaining the Chinese Characters(《说文解字》)，makes the explanation that the character meaning family name consisted of two elements, one meaning woman and the other birth(女+生 = 姓)，We can find in another Chinese classical book Zuo Zhuan(《左传》) the saying: “Family names come along with birth”. There are a lot of Chinese classical family names that consist of the element that means “woman”. For example, “姚”, “姬”, “妊”, “姜”, etc. Those family names reveal the naming practice of the matriarchal period and also prove that China in history had a period of matriarchal society.

In China, what came into existence first, the family name or the first name？A lot books has been examined and yet no definite answer is obtained. From what has been read, the following speculation can be made that in China the family name came after the first name. The speculation is made on the ground that in the primitive society, for the purpose of survival, people must help and co-operate with and help each other, they must use language to identify and call each other, this calling is personal, and if we accept that the calling is personal, that calling should belong to the category of personal given names. As society developed, the primitive human groups grew into a higher social form, the matriarchal society, in which people know their mother only. When one “calling” or the same personal name was shared by too many, the function of the calling could not play well enough in telling one from another and so people began to derive something as a group sign from the sign of the mother and that group sign that derived from the mother is what is called today the family name, a matrimonial family name.

As time went on, matrimonial society began to be replaced by patriarchal society and so the head of a clan turned from the mother to the father. For instance, the first king in China’s history, Huang Di (around 2600BC), is the head of Xuanyuan Clan and King Yan Di (around 2600BC) is the head of Shen Nong Clan. In this patriarchal society, its head determined things of the clan and things of a family were decided by the head of the family, namely, the father. In this situation, both the clan name and the family name were taken after the male or the father and thus the decline of matrimonial society and the establishment of patriarchal system mark the second milestone of family names in development.

Before the Spring and Autumn Period in China’s history, the Chinese characters that meant present “family name” (xing shi, 姓氏) consisted of two meanings, xing(姓) meaning family name and shi(氏) clan name. in those days marriage could take place between two different family names with the same clan mane and marriage could not take place if the two parties had different clan names but names but the same family name.

The clan name (shi) came into existence with patriarchal society. To be more specific, it developed into its summit along with the system of enfeoffment (emperors and kings investing the nobility with hereditary titles, territories and slaves). Those titles and territories were named and that name be came the source of Shi. The nobility could subdivide the territories within the family and thus more subdivisions came into existence and so did more names within the Shi. It must be pointed out that the increasing number of Shi enriched the source of the Chinese family names a great deal, as a lot of Shi later turned into xing.

When China entered the Period of Warring States, the social function of Shi (clan name) began to decline with the system of enfeoffment. It declined because no matter what clan one was in, one had his own family name and one could inherit not only the family name from the father, but also the property and the power from him. In other words, the importance of family become greater than the clan and the family members could live independently without the clan. What is more, inheritance could show itself better only when the family lived independently.

The other important reason is that when China entered the Period of Spring and Autumn and the Period of Warring States, society experienced greats ups and downs and years of continual warring and fighting rendered a lot of nobility to common people and a lot of common people rose to nobility. When Emperor Qin Shi Huang founded the Qin Dynasty in 221BC, he overthrew the system of enfeoffment of the Zhou Dynasty and began to practice the system of prefectures and counties in government. The new system rendered Shi, a noble sign of the nobility, an empty mark and thus Shi became meaningless. As a result, the family name (姓, xing), a sign deriving from the matriarchal mother and keeping the blood relations, and clan name(氏，shi), a sign deriving from the patriarchal father and distinguishing nobility of families, began to become blended and united into one. With no soil for enfeoffment system, Shi began to lose its function and thus became blended with the family name xing. That union was significant: the union of the family name and the clan name marks the third milestone of family names in development and it also laid the foundation of China’s modern family name system. Even though there were some changes in the past feudal dynasties in China, the system of family names and when we use the Chinese character that means family name today, we mean the unified family name only.

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