The Chinese name and Influences
Statistic showed that there are over 22000 Chinese family names by the year 2002 (Wang, 2010), it is an important human phenomenon across time and space. A Chinese family name has a trial that can reach the beginning of the human species. It can be view as the connection between each Chinese and their family history. In the beginning, the ancient family name came from primitive totem worship, the tells and legends would describe this time as a matriarchal society, archaeologists proved this assumption.
According to Wang (2010), the period of vulvae adoration had left many stories like the female got pregnant by the river or the stone or the tiger, history would refer to this as totem induced. Nowadays, the Bai nationality (lived in Yunnan province) still believes that their family name Bai came from the story of a white tiger. The story goes like there used to be a woman who saw a white tiger, and then felt belly pain and realized she was pregnant, she delivered a human child. By the time this child grows up, he became a white tiger and lived in the forest, people say that there is a white tiger that protects the tribe from animal attacking and suffering, thus they remain the name Bai (meaning white). In consequence, the Chinese family name usually has a connection with nature.
Xing and Shi can both be translated as ‘family name’. However, Xing emerged after Shi. The primitive society would determine one Shi to whole tribe so that everyone inherits this family name. By the time of the Qin dynasty (the feudal society), the Shi had evolved into Xing. A Xing is not resolved by tribe but by the blood trail of the father. Since the man was allowed to marry several women, the wealthy person would have many descendants that carry his name.
Another way of getting Xing is an election or getting married, the officer that would have Xing or the married women would start to have husbands’ Xing. For instance, my family name Ma came from the second way. There used to be a general named She Zhao, when he won the war, the kingdom of Zhao (warring period state) names him as the leader of Ma Fu counties (a place in He Bei province nowadays), so the future generations (along with everyone who lived in this area) of She Zhao start to inherit the family name Ma Fu, then involved as Ma. Today, I inherit the book of my family tree, which can track the names of ancestors back to 600 years ago.
Despite the Qin dynasty’s many misdeeds, there was one thing that could be considered as advance. The Qin dynasty has a strict marriage law that said that people cannot get married with the same family name. Although no biology was recognized 2200 years ago, this single law had guaranteed that no more consanguineous marriage.
