Cao surname, Cao is a typical multi-ethnic, multi-origin surname, ranked twenty-sixth in the Song version of the "Hundred Family Names", and ranked thirty-second in 2016.
The surname Cao is more prosperous in the Sichuan-Gansu region and the Central Plains, mainly concentrated in Henan, Hebei and Sichuan provinces, accounting for 0.59% of the national population, with a total population of about 7.3 million.
The origin of the surname
It originated from the descendants of the Yellow Emperor Ji surname
In 1122 BC, King Wen of Zhou's son and brother of King Wu of Zhou' uncle Zhenduo was enfeoffed to Cao, built the capital Taoqiu, and became the prince of the first seal, which also became the ancestor of the Cao clan, cao shan and cao cao were his descendants.
Derived from official positions
Sun An of Wu Hui's great-grandson Wu Hui was enfeoffed in the State of Cao (曹国, in present-day Heze, Shandong) and belonged to a clan with the name of the state. According to legend, Emperor Huan had a great-grandson named Wu Hui, who blessed Huo Zhengrong during the emperor's reign. Wu Hui's son Lu Hui married the daughter of the Ghost Fang clan, Nu Wei (女嬇), and gave birth to six sons, the fifth of whom was named An (安), surnamed Cao (曹), and Xia Yu gave him the title of Cao Guan (曹官), which belonged to the clan with the title of official.
When Dayu was ruling the water, An was at the right time, and he was given the title of Cao Guan for his merits in controlling the water by Zuo Xia Yu. Cao Guan, also known as the "round earth" prisoner and the official who guarded the slaves, was not a minor official in the slave-owning regime whose main function was to suppress slaves at that time. Ann later took the official clan. This is the beginning of the surname Cao.
During the Zhou Dynasty, King Wu renamed Cao An's descendant Cao An (曹安) in the state of Zhao (邾国, in present-day Zoucheng, Shandong Province, and perished in Chu). During the Warring States period, the kingdom of Qi was destroyed by King Xuan of Chu. Later, some of the Yi people took the state as their clan and changed it to the Zhu clan; Some still take Cao as their clan, but they are for Cao's clan.
Originating from other ethnic minorities, it belongs to the Sinicization and change the surname to a surname
Among the present-day Yi, Hani, Naxi, Hui, Xibe and other ethnic minorities, there are Cao clan people, and most of their sources are in the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties during the central government's policy of bondage and the movement to change the land and return to the stream, and the flow is changed to the Han surname Cao, which has been passed down from generation to generation.
Migration distribution
The early Cao clan was born in Shandong and lived and multiplied in Shandong for a long time. As for the migration to Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hebei, Anhui and other places, it is a long time later.
During the pre-Qin dynasty, the Cao surname was mainly active in Gansu, Shandong and northern Jiangsu. During the Qin and Han dynasties, the surname Cao was already distributed in the provinces north of the Yangtze River and in Eastern China. In the early Tang Dynasty and the late Tang Dynasty, there were two great emigrations from the Central Plains to the south, and the surname Cao was one of the Central Plains surnames that entered Fujian.
At the end of the Tang Dynasty and the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the surname Cao entered Liangguang. In the early Qing Dynasty, the surname Cao entered The Taiwan region.
During the Han Dynasty, the Cao surname was already widely spread in the north and Anhui. This is a very important period of reproduction of the Cao surname. During the Han Dynasty, the Cao surname was widely spread in the north and Anhui, among which the Cao clan of the State of Ji came from the Ji surname, and most of the descendants lived in Yu County, and the Han Xiang Cao Ginseng belonged to this branch. At this time, the Cao surname was most concentrated in the current Shandong, Anhui, Henan, northern Jiangsu and other places, and even the main counties of the Cao family were later distributed in these areas.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Cao surname had already moved to Zhejiang, Anhui and other places. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, after the Three Kingdoms, the original simple Cao surname was confused, not only by Cao Cao's surname, but also by the Kang State after the surname of the surname. Due to years of war in the north, the Cao surname began to move southward on a large scale, moving to Zhangzhou (present-day Fujian Province) in the early Tang Dynasty, and gradually to Tong'an, Nan'an, Anxi, Qinshan and other places in Fujian.
At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Cao clan moved south to Jiangnan on a large scale. The ancestors of the Cao clan, who had lived in the north for a long time, moved south with their families in order to avoid the Huangchao Zhu Wen rebellion, and some of them moved all the way to Xiang into Fujian and moved to the area of Hengshan and Zhangzhou. Later, there were also traces of cao in southern Fujian, which were the result of the long-term reproduction and sowing of the Cao descendants who migrated south.
These Cao clan people in southern Fujian later moved to Taiwan. The three counties of Nantou, Changhua and Taipei in Taiwan are the most common areas with the surname Cao.
During the Song Dynasty, there were about 630,000 people with the surname Cao, accounting for about 0.81% of the country's population, ranking twenty-fourth.
After the Song Dynasty, the Cao surname was widely spread in most parts of China. During the Ming Dynasty, there were about 610,000 people with the surname Cao, accounting for about 0.65% of the country's population, ranking 30th.
Before the Ming Dynasty, the main body of the Cao surname has been in the Central Plains and Shandong, and during the Song, Yuanming, and Ming Dynasties, the continuous wars in the north naturally affected the Cao surname population, and the population reduction was very obvious.
During the Ming Dynasty, Jiangsu was the largest province with the surname Cao, accounting for about 19.3% of the total population of the country. The distribution in the country is mainly concentrated in Jiangsu, Shandong and Zhejiang provinces, accounting for about 44% of the total population of cao surnamed Cao in the country. It is secondly distributed in Jiangxi, Anhui and other provinces. The whole country has re-formed a large area with the surnames of Lu, Su, Zhejiang, Gan, and Anhui.