The first thing every founding monarch did was to establish the name of the country, and the "History of the Five Emperors" said: "From the Yellow Emperor to Shunyu, all have the same surname and different country names, with Zhang Mingde." "Successive dynasties and dynasties have their own origins in naming, some with profound meanings, and some with clear understanding. So, how did ancient times determine the names of dynasties?
Regional naming
Naming countries by region is a universal psychology of all mankind to commemorate and proclaim the origin and center of the country, such as the Roman Empire in the West. In China, the vast majority of dynasties, from xia to song, are also named by region, but they can be subdivided into several specific ways.
The Yellow Emperor of Yan made an alliance
At first, we were named after the place of residence, and this way was often tied to the ethnic group. Xia, most likely, is the hieroglyph of the Totem of the Xia clan, that is, the place was originally called "Xia", and the people who lived here were "Xia people". The reason why Yu is called "Xia Yu" is also from Yu Shun's canonization: "Yu was enfeoffed as Xia Bo, in the south of YuZhou, in present-day Yang Zhai, Henan (present-day Xuchang, Henan). Later, Yu Shun ceded the position of the leader of the tribal alliance to Xia Yu, and Yu's son Qi took the throne and began the era of "family world", and officially established the name of the country as "Xia".
Xia Dynasty
The same was true of the Later Shang and Tuesday Dynasties, where their ancestors settled somewhere and raised it to the name of the country. The merchant's ancestor Qi was enfeoffed by Yu Shun at "Shang" (in present-day Shangqiu City, Henan), and the Zhou people, under the leadership of their father, left the land of Qi, crossed the Qi and Frustrated Rivers, crossed the Liangshan Mountains, and finally reached Zhou Yuan (in present-day Fufeng County, Baoji City, Shaanxi), at the southern foot of the Qishan Mountains, and from then on called themselves "Zhou".
This tradition was established in the Form of a sub-feudal system by the Zhou Dynasty, and a more formal second way was derived: from naming one's place of residence to naming a vassal state. The most direct influence was Qin. The State of Qin and the State of Zhao have the same roots, and are the descendants of the father of king Mu of Zhou, and later divided into the surname of Yin and the surname of Zhao. During the reign of King Xiao of Zhou, there was a person named "Fei Zi" who lived in Inuqiu, this person was good at raising horses, and the locals recommended him to King Xiao of Zhou, and Fei Zi did not disappoint, and King Xiao of Zhou sealed him to the place of "Qin" (present-day Tianshui, Gansu) as a reward and gave him the surname of Yin.
By the time the King of Zhou You's beacon play led to the death of the kingdom, Qin Land had already been invaded by inuyasha, so The Duke of Qin Xiang struggled to serve the king and escorted the King of Zhou Ping all the way to Luoyi. In recognition of the merits of Duke Xiang of Qin, King Ping of Zhou officially recognized him as a prince and divided the land west of Qishan to him, and the State of Qin was officially born. Through the shang martingale transformation method, Qin became the most powerful princely state in one fell swoop, until Ying zheng unified the world and established the Qin Dynasty.
The influence of the sub-feudal system under the Qin system still existed, and many of its princely names were passed down to later dynasties and divided regimes, and some were used many times. The third way appears: although these titles are still related to the region, they are more related to the titles granted by the imperial court, and they are different from the princes under the sub-feudal system, and they are also different from the regions of the previous princely states. The Wei and Jin dynasties were precisely the period when this phenomenon was concentrated, and gradually developed a set of procedures: the founders of the dynasty first seized power in the previous dynasty to transform the emperor into puppets, then forced the emperor to crown himself as a duke, and then entered the knighthood as a king, and finally he or his descendants accepted the "Zen concession" to be called emperor, completed the change of dynasty, and the new dynasty established continued to use the name of the previous title.
The Three Kingdoms stood tall
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cao Cao seized the opportunity to welcome back Emperor Xian of Han and won him great political prestige, and his ambitions to unify the north also became more and more inflated. In the eighteenth year of Jian'an (213 AD), Emperor Xian of Han was forced to enfeoff Cao Cao as the Duke of Wei, with ten counties of Jizhou, including Hedong, Hanoi, Wei County, Zhao County, Zhongshan, Changshan, Julu, Anping, Ganling, and Pingyuan as fiefs. Cao Cao set up hundred officials and temples in his own Principality of Wei, above the king with the same surname, laying the foundation for Cao Pi's usurpation of Han. In the later period of Cao Wei, Sima Zhao "accepted" Cao Huan's canonization like a gourd, called the Duke of Jin, and took ten counties such as Taiyuan Shangdang Xihe Leping Xinxing Yanmen in Taiyuan Prefecture, Hongnong in Pingyang in The East of Sizhou, and Feng Yi in Yongzhou as fiefs. It was on this basis that Sima Shi established the Jin Dynasty and completed a brief unification.
The mainstream of Wei and Jin was still war. From the beginning, the Jin Dynasty was in a state of high corruption, with ministers vying for wealth, and the sixteen-year-long "Rebellion of the Eight Kings" between the clans for power and profit. The Xiongnu, Xianbei, Xianbei, Qiang, Qiang, and other ethnic minorities in the north took advantage of the situation to invade and destroyed the Western Jin Dynasty, forming a situation of confrontation between the north and the south. In addition to the common use of past dynasties and princely states, there is a special case of Southern Chen, which is the only regime in China that is named both by region and by its own surname, and the monarch Chen Ba is first a descendant of the Chen clan of Yingchuan, and then traced back to the Chen state of the Spring and Autumn Period, so it is named "Chen".
Five nonsense
There may also be cases of avoidance in the way of naming regions, which makes us mistakenly think that they have nothing to do with regions. The name of the Sui Dynasty actually comes from "Sui", Yang Jian's father Yang Zhong, because of his bravery and good war, was worshipped by the Northern Zhou imperial court as a great general of the Pillar State and was given the title of Duke of Suiguo, "Sui" actually came from the Sui State (present-day Suizhou City, Hubei) during the Spring and Autumn Period. However, after Yang Jian inherited the title, he was afraid of "following" with the meaning of "going", and out of his expectation of Jiangshan Yonggu, he changed "sui" to "Sui". In ancient times, it was kept secret for His Holiness, and under the influence of this, people with the surname "Sui" throughout the country were also changed to the surname of "Sui".
Named after the Confucian classics
In addition to regional factors, the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties corresponded to three different special naming methods. Among them, the Yuan Dynasty originally belonged to the Mongol Empire, but the Great Khan Kublai Khan was keen on the Central Plains culture, and in order to gain the support of the Han landlords, he accepted the system of the Central Plains Dynasty. However, on the issue of taking the name of the country, he had his own ideas, believing that the past dynasty "was the Qin for the Han Dynasty, and wrote the name of the place from the beginning; the Sui and Tang dynasties, because they were the knights of the tang." Naming countries by region is just a stopgap measure based on the customs of the people, which seems fair, but it still has a derogatory meaning, because he feels that this is not enough to encompass the world.
In the eighth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1271 AD), Kublai Khan issued an edict changing the name of the country to "Dayuan", taking the meaning of "Qianyuan" in the I Ching. The whole sentence of "Qianyuan" reads: "The "Yan" says: "Great Qianyuan, the beginning of all materials, is the unification of heaven." This means, "O noble and great Heaven!" You are the ruler of all things, all things depend on your yang qi to live, and everything in the world belongs to the Heavenly Dao. As for the vision of the name "Yuan", Kublai Khan did not mention it directly in the edict, but the end of this passage in the I Ching tells us that "all the countries are Xianning", that is, all the worlds are all and Meantai.
Named after a religious name
However, the speed of corruption of the Yuan Dynasty was also unimaginable to Kublai Khan, and under the influence of the old Mongol system, the succession to the throne of the descendants was chaotic, and the internal friction in the court quickly led to the turmoil of the entire society. Under the intertwining of social contradictions and ethnic contradictions, peasant uprisings inevitably broke out.
Folk religion is a common way to organize uprisings, and Mr. Yang Ne believes in the book "Research on White Lotus Religion in the Yuan Dynasty" that "Ming" comes from the White Lotus Sect (Buddhist sect), and there is indeed a shadow of the White Lotus Sect behind the peasant uprisings of the entire Three Dynasties of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties.
At that time, the White Lotus Sect member Han Shantong called himself "born of the Ming King", the so-called "Ming King", that is, the "King of Light of the Buddhas" mentioned in the Great Amitabha Sutra, once the Ming King came into the world, the suffering people would usher in the savior, and the Red Turban Army would worship him as its leader. After Han Shantong's death, the Red Turban Army honored his son Han Lin'er as the King of Xiaoming, but Han Lin'er lacked the authority to control the situation. Zhu Yuanzhang took the opportunity to emerge, he successively eliminated Chen Youyu, Zhang Shicheng and other forces, and then put the Xiaoming King in the air, and finally the Xiaoming King mysteriously drowned, and Zhu Yuanzhang set up his own portal.
In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang took the throne as emperor in Yingtian (Nanjing), and the name of the country was "Ming" and the era name was Hongwu. The name is so, one is corresponding to the content of the Great Amitabha Sutra: "Its light is illuminated, and the places where there are no worlds under the heavens are always bright." Zhu Yuanzhang once lived in Buddhism and used Buddhist scriptures to take the name of the country; second, for political reasons, he was the orthodox successor of the "Birth of the Ming King".
The origin of the Ming dynasty name is actually controversial. There is also a popular saying from Mr. Wu Han's "Ming Sect and the Ming Empire": "To the name of the country of 'Daming', I have privately seen a 'Ming King' from the father and son of the Han clan, and the Ming King is from the "Ming King's Birth Classic". The Ming Dynasty Classics are Mingjiao classics, and the name of the Ming Kingdom is actually from the Ming Sect. Although this statement was later falsified by Mr. Yang Ne, it had great influence, and Mr. Jin Yong's "Book of the Dragon Slaughter in the Heavens" adopted this view, and the Ming Sect was portrayed as the biggest anti-Yuan force in the story, and Zhu Yuanzhang, as the marshal of the Ming Sect army, excluded the Sect's unscrupulous ideas, which corresponded to the death of Han Lin'er in reality. Wuxia novels and film and television works are popular among the people, making us subconsciously think that "Ming" is linked to "Mingjiao".
There is also a saying that "Ming" and "Yuan" also come from the Confucian classic I Ching: "The Great Ming begins, the six are timely, and the six dragons are multiplied to conquer the heavens." This sentence is exactly after "DaZha Qianyuan", which is also a Qiangua, indicating the inheritance of "Ming" to "Yuan". However, the above statements are suspected of being attached, and where the "Ming" comes from, Zhu Yuanzhang himself did not explain.
Sources of "Qing" with divergent opinions
In the late Ming Dynasty, the Jurchens living in the northeast re-emerged, posing a great threat to the Ming Dynasty under the command of Nurhaci. In the tenth year of Tiancong (1636 AD), nurhaci's heir, the fourth son Emperor Taiji, went to the throne of Jin Khan, imitated the Emperor's throne in Zhongyuan, changed the name of the country to "Great Qing", and changed the Jurchen clan to Manchu. Regarding the origin of the country name, the more popular sayings are:
Directions say. The Qianlong Emperor's poem is recorded in the "Examination of the Origin of Manchuria": "The emperor of heaven created the Qing Dynasty, and the origin of Dadong." "With five colors and five sides, the east is cyan, and Daqing may mean dadong, that is, the country located in the east."
Shamanic faith says. Cyan is admired by the people who believe in shamanism, and the Manchus are also one of them, so they take "Qing" as the national name.
Five elements said. Ming is fire virtue, Qing is water virtue, in order to overcome fire with water, hence the name Qing.
Shao Hao Jin Tianshi said. The Japanese scholar Inaba Iwaiyoshi believes: "The father of the Shōho Kim Ten clan is Qing, and he is also called the Kiyoshi of the Earth. Most of the Jurchens consider themselves to be descendants of the JinTian clan, which is also an act of moving closer to the Central Plains culture.
Appease the Ming courtiers. Mr. Fan Wenlan believes: "Jin's national name stimulated the national feelings of the Ming Dynasty, and Emperor Taizong created the word Manchuria to replace it in order to show that he was not a descendant of Yan Jin and forbid the use of the title of Jurchen. And the voices of "Dajin" and "Daqing" are close to each other, and it seems appropriate to replace it with "Qing".
Spoken in minority languages. Derived from the Manchu Mongolian loanword "daicing". The Great Qing Dynasty means "Kingdom of Shang" (i.e., "Kingdom of the Supreme") or "Kingdom of Good War". Compared with the "Ming", scholars are even more inconsistent about the source of the "Qing", which is still a historical unsolved case.