China has a long cultural history, Chinese is a nation that pays attention to family inheritance, so the surname as a sign of the continuation of the bloodline, the appearance of particularly important, as early as the yellow emperor in the primitive tribal period, there is a tradition of naming surnames, the yellow emperor because he lived on the edge of the Ji river (now called Qishui River), called himself the ji surname.
According to the Chronicle of History. The Book of the Five Emperors records that "the Yellow Emperor had twenty-five sons, and fourteen of them had the surname." "The later Five Emperors, together with the ancestors of the Shang And the ancestors of the Zhou clan, the Ancestor of the Peasant God Houji, were all descendants of the Yellow Emperor, which is why we are now called the descendants of Yanhuang."
In ancient times, surnames and surnames were often separated from each other: "Those whose surnames are unified by their clans; those who are clans are not divided by their descendants." That is to say, the surname is a racial number, and the surname is a branch of the surname, after the Qin and Han Dynasties, in order to unify the management of the household registration, the two are slowly integrated, and there are many origins of the surname, some with the official position as the surname, and some with the fief as the surname. China has a strange surname, only three strokes, most people open their mouths to read it wrong, can you read it correctly? It's called "彡.".
Actually this word is pronounced (shan first sound), what does it mean? The ancient book "Shuowen" records: "Yan, the wool ornament painting text also." Pictographic. "Expressed as decorated with feathers, it is a hieroglyph.
At first, the surname Yan was a rare surname of the Qiang tribes in Shaanxi during the Han Dynasty, and later with the development of Sinicization, this clan was simplified to the single word "彡", and there is a very interesting legend about this surname. During the eighth year of Emperor Ming Yingzong Tianshun (1464 AD), there was a student named Yan Mao in Hubei Public Security, who took the imperial examination, passed the examination, passed the examination, passed the jinshi, and came to the capital to take the final temple examination.
And the highest level of the palace examination was personally managed by the emperor, he looked at the roster of candidates, found that this surname he did not know at all, let himself be the prime minister Li Xian, Li Xian, who was very knowledgeable in the end, he replied on the side, this word reads "Shaanxi" in Shaanxi, and when Yan Mao and others finished the examination, Ming Yingzong said to him, Your word is also too difficult to read, and you will change it to the surname of "Shaanxi". The emperor's words, Yan Mao naturally did not dare not listen, so he changed to the Surname of Shaanxi. In this regard, the "Wan LiYe Zhi Zhi" recorded: "Tianshun Jiake, there is a jinshi Yan Mao Dengdi, Shi Xianzong's new ascension to the throne, blaming his surname is rare, ask the head of the question Li Xian, to the cloud: 'This word is pronounced Shaanxi, but the rhyme book has not seen it also!'" ’”
And in the following hundreds of years, the surname of Yan people have moved to change their surname or marry far away, the remaining population has slowly begun to be scarce, today, only Gaozhuang Village in Heze district of Shandong Province still lives more than 200 villagers with the surname of Yan, when the household census was carried out, when handling the second-generation ID card, the computer system could not recognize the character, so in desperation, these villagers can only use a similar pronunciation of "Xian" or "shan" to replace, many villagers are also a little uncomfortable, after all, after so many years of inheritance, This surname has also slowly disappeared among many surnames in China, and it has also witnessed changes in Chinese history in the past thousand years, and now the symbol "彡" is more in various Chinese characters, becoming its side or other important composition.