According to the Three Sayings, "Of the twenty-five sons of the Yellow Emperor, fourteen of his surnames were twelve, ji, you, qi, ji, teng, zhen, ren, xun, xun, 僖, 姞, 儇, and yi shiye. However, Qingyang and Yigu share their surnames. ”
A long history of surname culture
The surname Ji ranked 297th in the "Hundred Family Names" compiled by the Song Dynasty, and as many as 411 surnames were performed by the Ji surname, accounting for 82% of the total surnames in the "Hundred Family Names".
Over the past thousand years, the surnames that have evolved from the Ji surname are even more numerous, so the Yellow Emperor will be feng as the ancestor of the Chinese nation.
According to statistics, there are currently 23,813 surnames in China.
Some of the more rare and at the same time the most distinctive surnames are Chinese compound surnames, but some of them are often mistaken for Japanese surnames.
As we all know, Japan's history and writing are from ancient China, and in terms of surname culture, Japan is mostly compound surnames.
There is a very famous japanese writer, Keigo Higashino, whose books are very popular. In people's minds, Higashino is a Japanese surname.
But this is not the case, the surname "Dongye" is an authentic Chinese surname, and it has been produced for a very long time, at least 3,000 years ago.
A noble surname from a thousand years ago
According to the "Dongye Zhi", Dongye originated from the surname of Ji, and the Yellow Emperor's surname was Gongsun Xuanyuan, who grew up in Jishui and changed his surname to Ji. After King Wu destroyed Shang. The Duke of Zhou, Ji Dan, was the first to be enfeoffed to Lu, and the Duke of Zhou was not sealed, leaving an assistant to King Wu. In the first year of King Cheng,the eldest son of the Duke of Zhou, Bo Yan,was enfeoffed with Lu as the Duke of Lu. Lu Gong gave birth to three sons, the eldest son, the second son Xi, and the third son. Lu Gong gave the three sons of the fish Higashinoda Ichisei to raise himself, so he took Higashino as his surname and Tian as his name, and this Higashino surname came from.
Therefore, the Dongye surname is a very old surname group, and its county is Shandong Lu County.
In the first year of the Northern Song Dynasty, that is, in 1008 AD, Emperor Zhenzong of Song posthumously named the Duke of Zhou as King Wenxian, and rebuilt the Temple of King Wenxian in the old site of the Taimiao Temple in the State of Lu, and the Dongye clan was also included in the temple.
After obtaining the surname, the Higashino clan of the Himeyu lineage has always lived in the Qufu area of Shandong Province. In the twenty-fourth year of the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, that is, in 1685 AD, the Kangxi Emperor conferred on the 75th generation of the Dongye clan, the Hereditary Hanlin Academy Doctor of Dongye Peiran.
At this time, there were only more than a hundred Dongye families in the Qufu area.
Today, dongye surnames are concentrated in Pingyi County in Shandong Province, Zhoukou County in Henan Province, and Huanghua City in Hebei Province.
The Japanese surname "Higashino" was born after the Meiji Restoration, in accordance with the Order of the Commoners to Be Called Hmong characters issued by Emperor Meiji.
At that time, some people originally did not have a surname, but they were forced to take a surname, so according to the principle of "Chuan, Tian, Shan, and Ye" as surnames, the meaning was "the field in the east", which had nothing to do with the Chinese "Dongye" surname.
Originally a Chinese surname, it became a Japanese surname
In addition to the surname "Higashino", there is another surname that has always been mistaken for a Japanese surname, and this surname is Niigaki.
The origin of the surname "Xinyuan" is now unverifiable, but according to historical records, it can be determined that it was produced no later than the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty.
In history, there are also many celebrities with the surname "Xinyuan", among which the Wei general Xinyuan Yan was represented by the Warring States period.
According to the Chronicle of Zou Yang in The Chronicle of The Eighty-Third Chronicle of Lu Zhonglian, he sent an envoy to the State of Zhao on the orders of King An of Wei to persuade King Xiaocheng of Zhao to support the establishment of King Zhaoxiang of Qin as emperor. Upon hearing the news, Lu Zhonglian rushed to Handan and demanded that he stop this action. Xinyuan Yan was persuaded by Lu Zhonglian to abandon the task entrusted by the King of Wei.
In the later Han Dynasty, there was also an alchemist named Xinyuanping, but his fate was not good, because he angered Emperor Wen of Han in the court, and was killed by Emperor Wen of Han in anger.
After the Han Dynasty, there is no record of the surname of Xinyuan in history.
The Japanese surname "Niigaki" is mainly distributed in the Okinawa Islands, which has long been a vassal state of China in ancient history, the Ryukyu Kingdom.
However, the "Xinyuan" clan of Ryukyu has nothing to do with the Chinese "Xinyuan" surname, and it was changed from the Lin surname in Fujian to the Ryukyu Kingdom.
In addition to the surname "Shingaki", the Chinese surnamed Lin who moved at that time later changed their surnames to Shenshan, Wakuji, Matsumoto and other surnames.
After Japan occupied Ryukyu, "Niigaki" became one of the Japanese surnames.
brief summary
Although these two surnames are very similar to Japanese surnames, which is often misleading, we should understand the origin of these two surnames, which is both a respect for those who have these surnames and an identification with our long-standing surname culture.
References: Trilingual, Historia