Qin Shi Huang was the founder of an era, in his hands, the first unified feudal dynasty in Chinese history was born, and then he established a series of political, economic, and civilized systems adapted to centralized rule, and his influence was extremely far-reaching. Although he is known as an emperor throughout the ages, qin shi huang's experience is complicated, his life is bumpy, and now many people still have doubts, his mother's surname is Yin, his father's surname is Zhao, it should be called "Zhao Zheng", not "Yingzheng"? What's going on here? Xiaobian this will solve the puzzle for everyone.
This actually involves a surname and surname issue.
Today, each family usually has only one surname for external use, but in ancient times it was different, when the "surname" and "surname" of the Han people were not yet merged into one, but had their own meanings.
The origin of "surname" and "surname" is very early, and the origin of surname is earlier than the origin of the surname. In ancient times, the Han chinese, like all other ethnic groups in the world, also experienced the stage of matrilineal clan communes. At that time, all the women of one clan married all the men of another clan, which was a system of group marriage. People are born members of their mother's clan, knowing their mother but not their father.
The so-called surname was initially related to the name or other characteristics of his mother's clan. Just as the ancestor emperor was born on the shore of Ji Shui, his descendants took Ji as their surname; Emperor Yan was born on the shore of Jiang Shui, and his descendants took Jiang as their surname; Shun was born in Yao Xu, and his descendants took Yao as their surname. In fact, Ji, Jiang, Yao, etc. are not only water names, but also place names and clan names at that time. Clans take the name of their place of residence as their name, which is a common practice among ancient peoples. Therefore, the three names of places, clan names and clan names were mostly consistent at first.
People know the name and surname of their clan, and under the increasing number of exchanges with the outside world and the changing of clan organizations, they can form a relationship of mutual rescue and mutual rescue, so that they can "love each other in life and mourn each other in death". In addition, the family name is also the basis for distinguishing the bloodline. Han ancestors have long known that marriage within the blood clan is not conducive to the reproduction of healthy offspring, so they insist on "the same surname does not marry", and the different surnames can intermarry, for example, the surname Ji and the surname of Jiang are two surnames that are mutually married.
The "surname" we concept today is actually a clan in the pre-Qin era, which is a patrilineal blood clan symbol. The original concept of "surname" in the pre-Qin era gradually faded during the Warring States period, and by the Time of the Western Han Dynasty, it had disappeared so completely that when Sima Qian wrote the "History", he sometimes confused "surname" and "surname".
Let's go back to Qin Shi Huang. Qin Shi Huang's maternal surname was Yin, his father's surname was Zhao, and his name was Zheng. According to today's rules, his full name is Zhao Zheng. The "name" of the "Yingzheng" method was completely absent by the Western Han Dynasty, because by the time of the Western Han Dynasty, the "maternal surname" in the pre-Qin sense had disappeared. The so-called "surnames" of the Western Han Dynasty and the Western Han Dynasty are actually all "father's surnames".