Source: Interesting trivia
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As the inheritance of our Chinese nation's bloodline, the surname has always been the most important thing for the continuation of the family. From ancient times to the present, the total number of surnames left written records by various ethnic groups has reached about 24,000, but some surnames have disappeared in the long river of history, and only about 6,000 are still in use today.
As a work that records surnames, "Hundred Family Names" is one of the three major enlightenment education books for children in ancient China. The first surname in "Hundred Family Names" is "Zhao", but the surname "Zhao" is not ranked first in terms of population in any dynasty, so its order may not be based on the number of people. So why is "Hundred Family Names" ranked by "Zhao Qiansun Li ......"?
"Hundred Family Names"
According to the literature, the "Hundred Family Surnames" was written in the early Northern Song Dynasty, which originally included 411 surnames, and later increased to 504, of which 444 were single surnames and 60 were compound surnames. It adopts a four-word style, each sentence rhymes, although the content does not extend the meaning, but it is catchy to read and easy to remember, which is also the reason why "Hundred Family Names" can be passed down for thousands of years.
The order of "Hundred Family Names".
"Hundred Family Names" was written in the Wuyue region of the Northern Song Dynasty, and its surnames were arranged in order according to their status and influence at that time.
Wang Mingqing of the Song Dynasty once explained in the third volume of his "Yuzhao Xinzhi": "For example, the "Hundred Family Names" printed in the market, the Ming and Qing dynasties tried to examine it in detail, and it seems to be written by the small people of the Qian family in Zhejiang and Zhejiang. The first cloud: 'Zhao Qian Sun Li', Gai Qian's Feng Zhengshuo, Zhao Nai's surname in the current dynasty, so Qian is second, Sun is the concubine of Zhongyi (Qian Yu), and the second is Jiangnan Li's. This sentence "King Wu Zheng of Zhou" is all martial and descending concubines, and there is no suspicious person. ”
That is to say, Wang Mingqing also wondered about the ranking of "Hundred Family Names", after research, it should be written by an ordinary person when Wu Yueguo in the two Zhejiang regions (today's Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu, and southern Anhui) was not destroyed.
Originally, it was supposed that the Qian family should be ranked first, but at this time, the surname Zhao was the surname of the emperor of the Song Dynasty, so "Zhao" was ranked first, and the surname "Qian" was second. The surname "Sun" is the surname of Sun Taizhen, the concubine of Qian Yu, the last king of Wu Yue, and "Li" is the surname of Li Yu, the monarch of the Southern Tang Kingdom.
Historically, Sun Taizhen has been reading since childhood, good at reading the Five Classics, intelligent, knowledgeable, benevolent, and thrifty, and has a good reputation in the confidence of the people. Li Yu, the queen of the Southern Tang Dynasty, was a famous lyricist, and his works were well-known in the north and south at that time, and were called "the emperor of words through the ages" by later generations, and there are many Li Yu's words in textbooks today. Therefore, in the order of the first group of surnames "Zhao Qiansun Li" in the "Hundred Family Surnames", the first two are the surnames of the monarchs at that time, and the last two are the surnames of celebrities in the early Song Dynasty.
Later, Wang Mingqing also mentioned the second group of surnames "King Wu Zheng of Zhou", which were the surnames of the four concubines of the first king of Wu Yue, King Qian Biao of Wusu.
Therefore, the ranking order of the first eight surnames in "Hundred Family Names" is well-founded, and in the social environment at that time, it was not simply based on the number of people, but the back row simply relied on rhyme.