The so-called national name, in ancient times, refers to the name of the dynasty. Once the name of the country is changed, it means that the dynasty has also changed. In terms of status and importance, titles, temple titles, and titles, which are the necessities of feudal society and the name of the country, are not at all on the same level, and the ancients believed in the "Mandate of Heaven", so the name of the country often has a very formal source and cannot be taken at will.
There are not many examples in history of "casually" taking the name of the country, and if you have to list it, you should count the Southern Dynasty Chen Guo (557-589 AD). The name of the country is "Chen" because the founder of Southern Chen is called Chen Baxian, and the Chen Dynasty is also the only dynasty in Chinese history that uses the emperor's surname as the national name.
Except for the Southern Dynasty Chen, there were no cases in which monarchs used their surnames as the name of the country. For example, Qin Shi Huang's surname is Yin, but he still uses "Qin" as the national name, Liu Bang's surname is Liu, but uses "Han" as the national name. Generally speaking, there are several criteria that can be referred to by emperors or princes when choosing country names:
First, the use of auspicious words and proverbs as the name of the country. According to the research of later scholars, the name of the Ming Dynasty was taken from the I Ching: "The Great Qianyuan, the beginning of all materials, is the unification of heaven ... The Ming Dynasty begins, the six are formed, and the six dragons are multiplied to conquer the heavens. Obviously, there is some connection between the Ming Dynasty's national name "Ming" and the previous Yuan Dynasty, and the "Daming" here has the meaning of "sun". Therefore, the Ming Dynasty can also be said to be the "Dynasty of the Sun", which in some ways has the meaning of surpassing the status of the previous dynasty.
Second, adopt their own knighthood as the name of the country. Such a situation is simply innumerable in history, just like Yang Jian, the founder of the Sui Dynasty, who was originally the Duke of Suiguo of Northern Zhou, who felt that "Sui" had an unstable meaning, so he took a similar "Sui" as the national name; Li Yuan, the founder of the Tang Dynasty, also came from the bureaucratic aristocracy of Northern Zhou, attacked the Duke of Tang, and after laying down the Jiangshan, he took "Tang" as the national name.
Third, the place of origin or origin is used as the country name. Just like the Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin, he was originally a military general of the Later Zhou Dynasty, serving as the envoy of the Song Prefecture to the German army, in 960 AD, Zhao Kuangyin added a yellow robe, thinking that he was born in Song Prefecture, this place originally belonged to the ancient Song Kingdom, and it was determined that the country name was "Song".
In addition, there is also a common situation, that is, to copy the name of the previous dynasty, which is called "honor and inheritance", which has a feeling of inheriting the glorious years of the predecessors, showing the noble blood of the emperor, and the long history of the imperial family. For example, during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, The founder of the Southern Tang Dynasty, Li Fu, was originally a wandering orphan, but when he claimed the emperor, he claimed to be a descendant of the Li Tang imperial family, and he rightly copied "Tang" as the national name.
Another example is the Zhou Dynasty, which enjoyed the kingdom for 791 years, has always been known for its strict system of ceremonial music, and has its own elegant model, and its national name "Zhou" has also been used by Wu Zetian (the founder of Wu Zhou), Yuwen Jue (the founder of Northern Zhou) and others. However, there is also a very special dynasty in history, although it has lasted for 554 years, it can be called a "longevity dynasty", but no dynasty has copied its national name in later generations.
This dynasty was the Shang Dynasty. Shang can be interpreted as commerce, merchants, and merchants, as recorded in the "Chronicle of The Chronicle of Goods": "If the merchant does not come out, the three treasures are extinct." The I Ching also mentions: "Business travel is not OK." "The Shang Dynasty was the second hereditary dynasty in Chinese history, with a total of 17 generations and 31 kings, the founder of shang tang was a famous sage in ancient times, and the last monarch was the well-known Emperor Xin of The King of Sui.
According to historical records, the ancestors of merchants can be traced back to the Five Emperors period. His name was Qi, and because of his merits in helping Dayu to control the water, he was enfeoffed to Shangyi, and from then on, his tribe was named "Shang". That is to say, "Shang", as a national name, originated from the place of origin of the ancestors, and we now understand that "will do business, so called a businessman" is two different things.