In this world, everyone has their own name, which is what we call a name, and now everyone is equal, so it doesn't matter what the surname is, but in ancient times, what the surname was was a big deal.
The TV series "White Deer Plain" is particularly popular, and there is a detail about the name, which you may not have paid attention to, that is, Bai Jiaxuan named Heiwa Lu Zhaoqian, and Heiwa felt that it didn't matter, it was because he didn't know the meaning.
Heiwa's father, Lu San, was very excited, because with a name, it means that Heiwa can enter the ancestral genealogy, which can be seen that if Heiwa has always been called "Heiwa", he is a person with no identity, in other words, an inferior person.
Everyone must know that the background of this plot in "White Deer Plain" is still when the Qing Dynasty has fallen, and some feudal ideas and rules are still just leftovers, and the earlier feudal society must be more stringent than this.
In China, the "surname" represents the source of a person's bloodline, that is, "the kind of princes and generals", in addition to the surname, there is also "clan", which also shows identity, but the surname is in front and the surname is in the back, mainly because "clan" is the subordinate of the surname.
For example, you may understand that in ancient times, after the average woman got married, she did not call her name, but followed her husband's surname, followed by a "clan", such as "Zhang's, Liu's, Wang's, etc."
As mentioned above, the surname represents the high and low, which is distinguished according to the bloodline of the surname, and in ancient times, the high and low of the "surname" also represented the high and low of the bloodline, after all, the king or emperor is incomparable to ordinary people.
According to the difference in bloodline and status, the "surname" is different, and in ancient times, the inheritance of father and son was emphasized, so it can be said that people with noble status will always be noble, and lowly people will always be low, which is the ancient society with strict hierarchies.
According to the introduction in the "Study of Oracle Bone Characters", it is believed that the surname originated from the worship of totems, for example, the surname "dragon" comes from the totem painted with a dragon, and the surname "Ying" of Qin Shi Huang is a kind of name for a beast.
In fact, to put it bluntly, the surname was a code name in the beginning, but some people with "surnames" have obtained a higher social status, and his "surname" has become noble, so that is, the surnames of ancient emperors or famous officials are noble.
For example, after becoming the emperor, the emperor's surname has become the national "surname", and other surnames are one level lower than the emperor's surname, like some century-old famous families, such as the Cui surname of Qinghe, the Lu surname of Fan Yang in the Northern Wei Dynasty, etc., although these lines are not the emperor's surname, but because they are famous, they are still more noble than some grassroots.
From this point of view, all the surnames of emperors in the past dynasties have been noble. Of course, there are also people who change their surnames, such as many people change their surnames to "Wang", which is not counted, unless the emperor gives the surname, such as Zheng Chenggong was changed to "Zhu" by the emperor, so he is called the national surname.
Since the emperor can give a surname to make a person noble, he can also make a person change his surname and make him lowly, for example, in the Qing Dynasty, an official committed a crime during the Yongzheng period, and the family was changed to a surname by Yongzheng to "scold", so that he became a pariah for generations.
Later, it was not until the fall of the Qing Dynasty that this family reverted to its original surname. To this day, people still say "please ask your surname" when they meet, which shows that the dynasty can be destroyed, but the backward concept in people's hearts is difficult to remove.