Hundred Family Surnames
The Hundred Family Surnames (Chinese: 百家姓), commonly known as Bai Jia Xing,[1] also translated as Hundreds of Chinese Surnames,[2] is a classic Chinese text composed of common Chinese surnames. The book was composed in the early Song dynasty.[3] It originally contained 411 surnames, and was later expanded to 504.[3] Of these, 444 are single-character surnames, and 60 are double-character surnames. About 800 names have been derived from the original ones.[4]
| Hundred Family Surnames | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | 百家姓 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanyu Pinyin | Bǎijiā Xìng | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
In the dynasties following the Song, the Three Character Classic, the Hundred Family Surnames, and Thousand Character Classic came to be known as San Bai Qian (Three, Hundred, Thousand), from the first character in their titles, and were the enlightenment books for children. [5] They were the almost universal introductory literary texts for students, almost exclusively boys, from elite backgrounds and even for a number of ordinary villagers. Each was available in many versions, printed cheaply, and available to all since they did not become superseded. When a student had memorized all three, he had a knowledge of roughly 2,000 characters. Since Chinese did not use an alphabet, this was an effective, though time-consuming, way of giving a "crash course" in character recognition before going on to understanding texts and writing characters.[6]
The Hundred Family Surnames was translated into Manchu as ᠪᡝ ᡤᡳᠶᠠ ᠰᡳᠩ (Wylie: Pe giya sing, Möllendorff: Be giya sing).
Form
The work is a rhyming poem in lines of eight characters. The surnames are not listed in order of commonality. According to Song dynasty scholar Wang Mingqing (王明清), the first four surnames listed represent the most important families in the empire at the time:[7]
- 1st: Zhao (趙) is the surname of the Song dynasty emperors.
- 2nd: Qian (錢) is the surname of the kings of Wuyue.
- 3rd: Sun (孫) is the surname of the queen Sun Taizhen of Wuyue king Qian Chu.
- 4th: Li (李) is the surname of the kings of Southern Tang.
The next four, Zhou 周, Wu 吳, Zheng 鄭, and Wang 王, were the surnames of the other wives of Qian Chu, the last king of Wuyue.[8]
Complete text
This text is written in Traditional Chinese. Note that several of these characters may link to the same article.
Prevalence in Modern times
Under 300th most common
- Yōng 雍 - 339th
- 平 - Ping - 315
- 米 316th
- 湛 369th
Under 400th most common
The following surnames are not among the 400 most common surnames according to a 2013 study:
See also
Notes
- Ting Hui Lee (2011). Chinese Schools in Peninsular Malaysia: The Struggle for Survival. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. pp. 249–. ISBN 978-981-4279-21-5.
- Patrick Hanks; Richard Coates; Peter McClure (November 17, 2016). The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland. OUP Oxford. pp. 43–. ISBN 978-0-19-252747-9.
- K. S. Tom. [1989] (1989). Echoes from Old China: Life, Legends and Lore of the Middle Kingdom. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1285-9.
- Chen, Janey. [1992] (1992). A Practical English-Chinese Pronouncing Dictionary. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 0-8048-1877-0
- "Taking Stock of Classic Early Childhood Readers". China Times. June 26, 2014.
- Rawski (1979), pp. 46–48.
- ""The Hundred Family Name" is in order What is the meaning of the surname culture?". Xinhua News Agency. March 5, 2006. Archived from the original on November 8, 2014.
- Chen Danning (September 3, 2014). 钱氏修"百家姓"将钱姓排第2位 钱王妃子姓氏靠前 (in Chinese). China News. Retrieved November 7, 2014.
- The last four-character line means "thus ends the Hundred Family Surnames." It is not intended to contain surnames.
References
- Rawski, Evelyn Sakakida (1979). Education and Popular Literacy in Ch'ing China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-08753-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
External links
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