The Culture of Surname

Chinese Surname

Chinese surname originated 5000 years ago. During the prehistorical period, tripe use toucan to distinguish themselves from other. It slowly evolved into surname that we know today.

Different from most the languages in the world, the Chinese character are derived from pictograms or a combination it. The world “surname” (姓) has two parts. On the left, (女) represent “woman” while on the right, (生) is the world bond. The world indicated that surname originally mean “children give birth by the woman”. The children, in ancient time, will have the same surname if they are given birth by the same women. As the structure of the society convert from merternel society into perternal society, the children began to adopt the father's surname. Some of these ancient surname such as 姬,姜are still commonly used in current days.

As family growth, members of family started to travel to other places. Another form of surname started to form. They are call “氏”. To distinguish themselves from others in the family, on top of the original surname, Shi “氏” indicate the skills, name of places, position, country name etc..of the branch.

Most of the Shi were form during the Warrior Period 2500 years ago. Slowly, the differences between “姓”and “氏” became ambuguious. Ultimately, it became the surname use by Chinese in the present world. We can safely said that most of the Chinese surname use in the present world are formed in 2500 years ago.

Not every surname with the same character have the same origin. There are many families, for one reason or another use the same character as their family name. Adversely, family with different character might be from the same family. Somewhere along the line, the family members change their name. These change are carefully track by these family and till now there still regards each other as family.

Accordance to survey, there were all together 12000 Chinese surname, however only 3000 surname used nowadays.

In Chinese tradition, people with the same surname are not to marry each other.