Loading AI tools
Classic composition of common surnames in China's Song dynasty From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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. An unknown author compiled the book during the Song dynasty (960–1279).[3] The book lists 507 surnames.[3] Of these, 441 are single-character surnames and 66 are double-character surnames.[3] About 800 names have been derived from the original ones.[4]
| Hundred Family Surnames | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 百家姓 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanyu Pinyin | Bǎijiā Xìng | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese alphabet | Bách gia tính | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chữ Hán | 百家姓 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Korean name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hangul | 백가성 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanja | 百家姓 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Japanese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kanji | 百家姓 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kana | ひゃっかせい | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In the dynasties following the Song, the 13th-century Three Character Classic, the Hundred Family Surnames, and the 6th-century Thousand Character Classic came to be known as San Bai Qian (Three, Hundred, Thousand), from the first character in their titles. They served as instructional books for children,[5] becoming the almost universal introductory literary texts for students (almost exclusively boys) from elite backgrounds and even for a number of ordinary villagers. Each text was available in many versions, printed cheaply and available to all since they did not become superseded.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 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]
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]
This text is written in Traditional Chinese. Note that several of these characters may link to the same article.
| |||
|
|||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
| |
|
|||
|
In 2013 the Fuxi Institution compiled a ranking of the 400 most common surnames in China.[9]
According to the study, the following surnames are not among the 300 most common surnames:[9]
According to the study, the following surnames are not among the 400 most common surnames:[9]
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
