Hundred Family Surnames
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The Hundred Family Surnames (Chinese: 百家姓; pinyin: Bǎijiāxìng) is a classic Chinese text composed of common surnames in ancient China. The book was composed in the early Song Dynasty.[1] It originally contained 411 surnames, but was later expanded to 504.[1] Of these, 444 are single-character surnames, and 60 are double-character surnames. About 800 names have been derived from the original ones.[2]
The work is a rhyming poem in lines of eight characters.
The surnames are not listed in order of popularity. The first four surnames listed are believed to derive from the most important families in the empire at the time: Zhao (趙) is the family name of the Song Dynasty emperors, Qian (錢) is the family name of the kings of Wuyue. Sun (孫) is the family name of the queen of Wuyue, and Li (李) is the family name of the kings of Southern Tang.
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[edit] Family names in the Hundred Family Surnames
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[edit] Notes
- ^ a b K. S. Tom. [1989] (1989). Echoes from Old China: Life, Legends and Lore of the Middle Kingdom. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824812859.
- ^ Chen, Janey. [1992] (1992). A Practical English-Chinese Pronouncing Dictionary. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 0804818770
- ^ The last line was not intended to contain surnames but was appended to signify "thus ends the Hundred Family Surnames." Although it should be noted that there are people with surnames using the characters in this line.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Bai Jia Xing at the "Chinese Classics" page of the China News Digest
- http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/3919/hundred.html
- The Ten-Thousand Families of Surnames from Netor (NETOR纪念:万家姓氏) (in simplified Chinese only)
