Do you know? The tiger surname does not read "hǔ", but "māo".
According to media reports, on the mainland, the number of Tiger surnames in the crowd is extremely rare, mainly distributed in Zhaotong, Yunnan and Xindu District, Chengdu, Sichuan, Xindu District, Pidu District, in addition to Gansu, Nanjing, Guizhou, there are also Tiger surnames. But why is it that the ming surname "tiger" (hǔ) is pronounced as "cat" (māo)?
Hu Yongfang (Image network)
According to a scholar surnamed Li who has studied the tiger surname in Chengdu, there are many Hui people in the tiger surname, and the people with the tiger surname are called "māo" between each other, or outsiders call the tiger surname, "the shouting method has been passed down from ancient times to the present, and it is not a name that only exists in the year of the tiger."
Why is it called "cat" instead of "tiger"? Mr. Li introduced that he has gone to the place where people with the surname of hu live in the field, "because in everyone's impression, the tiger is more fierce, the cat is more docile, and the tiger also belongs to the feline family, its ancestor is a cat, so the tiger is also called a big cat, which can confirm that the tiger and the cat have the same ancestor." ”
Hu Yongfang, the chief of the Chengdu Fangcao Volunteer Corps, is a Hui person known as "Tiger Mother". The 74-year-old told the Red Star News reporter that listening to the older generation, from the perspective of national customs, the surname tiger is not called "tiger", but "cat", but with the development of the times and the great integration of nationalities, now everyone calls her "tiger" surname, not "cat" surname, "there are also called cats, but they are very rare." And when others call her a "cat" surname, she also feels normal, "like a word has two tones." ”
In this regard, the famous Bashu cultural scholar Yuan Tingdong said that the folk do have such a name, calling the tiger surname "big cat" and "bobcat", but it is not common.
Liu Dongxu, an associate professor at the Minzu University of China, said in an interview with the media that "more special surnames like 'Tiger' are related to historical development. ”
Historically, there are probably two sources of the tiger surname: one is from the descendants of Bo Hu, one of the "eight yuan" of the ancient Shunchen, with the tiger as the clan. According to ancient historical legends, Bo Hu was the minister of Emperor Zhao. The descendants of the Bohu clan then took the tiger as the surname and called the tiger clan, which became an important source of today's tiger family.
The second is the tiger surname from the Hui: the tiger surname in the Hui people, taken from the first sound of the ancestral name. For example, in the Ming Dynasty, the Western Regions people of the Western Regions, Qiu Kebier, lived in Nanjing to serve as the deputy qianhu of Jinyi Wei, and his son Hu Bei'er, who took Hu Bei'er as his surname, included Sun Huxian and Huma Town.
According to historical records: tiger (pronounced cat) surname Hui "only Chengdu tiger surname, pronunciation does not read tiger but read cat (māo). "In fact, the tiger surname in Yunnan also pronounces cat sounds. The Hu hui are mainly distributed in Nanjing, Chengdu and Luoyang.
This year is the Year of the Tiger, so everyone meets people with the surname of Tiger in the New Year, you can call "Tiger" "Cat māo", oh, don't make jokes.
Red Star News reporter Zhang Ling photo report
Edited by Wang He
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