Is Qi Huangong called "Jiang Xiaobai" or "Lü Xiaobai"?

Qi Huangong, the head of the "Spring and Autumn Five Powers", is a well-known figure. He "nine princes, one kuang the world", united the princes with the slogan of "honoring the king and the king", and opened the first hegemony in the history of the Spring and Autumn Period, and later generations spoke highly of him.

But here's a question: What is Qi Huangong's name?

Isn't it called "Qi Huan Gong"? Of course not. "Huan" is his nickname, and the nickname is that after a person dies, the evaluation given to him by posterity is considered to be a coffin, and when he is alive, he will not have such a title. Even if there is, who dares to call? Isn't this a curse to death? And to call the living monarch so, isn't that a long life? Calling the living people nicknames, this is a problem that many costume film and television dramas are often prone to make, and it is indeed a bit ridiculous to investigate in detail.

So what's his name?

First of all, it is not right to ask this question. For the ancients, "name" is "name", "word" is "word", "name" is used interchangeably, it became a fashion after the founding of New China, in fact, it is less than a hundred years of history. For people like Qi Huangong, who were pre-Qin, the distinction between "name" and "character" was only stricter.

Well, let's talk about what his name is.

There is no doubt about this. His name is "Gongzi Xiaobai", so the name is naturally "Xiaobai". (Please do not brain supplement the meaning of "little white" now)

So what's his last name?

There is no doubt about this. He is a descendant of the Duke of Qi, a descendant of "Jiang Taigong", and his natural surname is Jiang.

Therefore, it is right to say that Qi Huangong is called "Jiang Xiaobai"?

Unfortunately, it's not right. The characters of the pre-Qin Dynasty, "surname" and "surname" are very clearly distinguished. The surname represents the matrilineal line, the clan represents the patrilineal line; the surname is the general source stream, and the clan is the branch; the woman is called the surname, and the man is called the clan. Qi Huangong is naturally a man, so he should be called his clan. The Duke of Qi continued the bloodline of "Jiang Taigong", "Jiang Taigong" clan "Lü", so Qi Huan Gong naturally also had the clan "Lü". (Note that the reference to "Jiang Taigong" here is also in quotation marks, such a title was also inappropriate at the time)

Then Qi Huangong's name is "Lü Xiaobai", which is always right?

Unfortunately, there are still problems. We are now accustomed to the combination of "name", with the surname first and the name last, but it was not a common habit at that time. Especially for the gong clan, there are not many opportunities for names to be combined.

Qi Huangong is called "Xiao Bai". This is the same as the foreigner called "John", called "Jack", originally called a person by a name is enough. But there are more and more people, and more and more people with the same name, so it is necessary to use other additional information to distinguish him from another person with the same name. It is logical to use "surname" and "surname" to distinguish between two people with the same name but different clans, but in the pre-Qin custom, "surname" and "name" were not used together. In later evolution, Westerners gradually put the "family name" representing the family after the name, while the Chinese put the surname handed down from the family in front of the name.

It's just that all this hasn't happened yet in the era of Qi Huangong. He is called "Xiao Bai", in order to distinguish him from this person, you can call a "Gongzi Xiaobai", which means that his "name" is "Xiaobai", and his identity is a "Gongzi". "Gongzi", "Gongzi", "Gongzi" of "Gongzi" also indicates that he is the son of a certain "Gong". Duke Huan of Qi was the son of Duke Qi, and of course he was indeed a "prince". In the State of Qi, there will be no other possibility to call a "Gongzi Xiaobai", so there is no need to put this "surname" and "surname" in front of the "name". People of lower status than him called him, and when he was not yet the monarch, he could only be called "Gongzi", and after he became the monarch, he had to be called by the title of the monarch, and outsiders could only call him "Marquis of Qi" (qi guo was a marquis). Calling him by his first name is reckless and uncultured.

So speaking of this, is Qi Huangong called "Jiang Xiaobai" or "Lü Xiaobai"? Neither. He was the "Gongzi Xiaobai" of the State of Qi, surnamed Jiang, surnamed Lü, who was the "Gongzi" and "Marquis of Qi" of the State of Qi before his death, and after his death, he was called "Duke Huan of Qi".