What Is The Origin Of Chinese Surnames?
Chinese people have had surnames since before the era of the ‘Three Emperors and Five Kings’ (approximately 5 millennia ago). It was a female-centric society at that time, and therefore a surname would follow through the female generations, unlike the conventional western system that we use today. However, before the time of the Xia Dynasty, Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty, there were already surnames (such as Xing) and clan-names (such as Shi). The surname would have been taken from the name of the village in which the owner lived, or from the tribe to which they belonged, whilst the clan-name was a supplemental title originating from the name of the person’s territory, or from a title bestowed upon them. Therefore, only an aristocrat would have had a surname as well as a clan-name. A man and a woman of the same clan-name would be permitted to marry each other, but certainly not if they had the same surname. Because the ancient Chinese had a very advanced knowledge of genetics and here
