"Hundred Family Names" is a Chinese literature on surnames, and it is also a basic children's enlightenment book from ancient times to the present, originally written in the Northern Song Dynasty, including a total of 411 surnames, and later expanded to 504.
At the beginning of "Hundred Family Names", many people must recite: "Zhao Qiansun Li, Zhou Wu Zheng Wang..." It is estimated that some people will wonder why these hundred family names are arranged in this way, is it the zhao surname that is the most populous at that time? No, the reason why the Zhao surname ranked first was because Zhao was the national surname of the Song Dynasty at that time; in order to show respect for the royal family, Zhao naturally ranked first.
The remaining Qian, Sun, and Li are because the "Hundred Family Names" was written in the Wuyue region, the king of the Wuyue kingdom was Qian Li, his concubine was Sun Shi, and the last "Li" was because the surname of the Southern Tang dynasty in the Wuyue area was Li. In fact, during the Northern Song Dynasty, the surname with the most common surname was Guo, and the next three were Wang, Li, and Zhang.
Since the Song Dynasty, the Guo surname began to slowly decrease, the 4 surnames with the largest number of people in the Yuan Dynasty became Wang, Zhang, Li, Liu, and then basically these 4 surnames changed before and after, and the Ming Dynasty Chen surname replaced the ranking of Liu surnames, Chen surname 4, Liu surname 5.
The latest national census, which took place in 2016, is the sixth national census (the seventh national census, in 2020, has not yet begun). According to the data, the four surnames with the most Chinese are wang, Li, Zhang, and Liu; the number of people is 94.68 million, 92.76 million, 85.5 million, and 68.82 million, respectively.
The surname Wang is very domineering when you hear it, and in fact, it is true. The surname Wang comes from the surname of Ji, and it should be known that Ji ke is a first-class aristocratic surname in ancient times, one of the eight surnames of ancient times, or the surname of the Yellow Emperor. At present, the recognized ancestor of the wang surname is Prince Qiao, that is, Ji Jin, the prince of Eastern Zhou Ling.
Prince Qiao assisted the government as a crown prince, so he received the honor of the highest status as a surname in the pre-Qin dynasty, that is, the surname of Wang. The most famous emperor in history, surnamed Wang, is probably sandwiched between the two Han Dynasties, and was once considered to be a "crosser", who created a new dynasty.
Another theory is that the surname Li is derived from the surname Ji. At the beginning, the Fengba people of Zhou Wu established the Bazi state in the area of present-day Chongqing, and in 306 AD, the Ba people established the Chenghan regime in the Sichuan region, and the national surname was Li, which was also the first dynasty established by the Li surname in China. However, the most famous emperor surnamed Li must also count the Li Tang royal family.
The Li Tang royal family above is so famous, and the zhang surname of the third most populous person in the next person, but there is no emperor. Strictly speaking, the emperor did not have a formal unified regime. In 315 AD, Zhang Huan proclaimed himself the King of Liang and established the former Liang regime of the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Eastern Jin Dynasty; after all, this was only a title of king, not an emperor, even Zhang Xianzhong, who was famous in history for founding the Great Western regime, was not a serious emperor.
Unlike the Zhang surname, the surname Of Liu, who ranks next, has produced 92 people who claim to be emperors and kings, which is the surname with the most emperors in history. The reason why Liu Shi had so many emperors in addition to them was mainly that there were more emperors of the two Han Dynasties.
Since 202 BC, when Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gaozu, established the Western Han Dynasty, except for a new dynasty interspersed by Wang Mang in the middle, until 220 AD, it was the domain of Liu's regime, and the state was 406 years long. In addition to the two Han Dynasties, those who were descendants of the Han Dynasty in the chaotic and parallel regimes were basically surnamed Liu, such as the Shu Han regime established by Liu Bei during the Three Kingdoms period.
After reading these historical stories about surnames, are your surnames on the list?
Reference: "Hundred Family Names"