Author: Wan Qingtao Wang Hongjie
Yellow, hieroglyphic, traditional chinese written 黃, pronounced huáng. The oracle bone yellow character is like a locust, the upper side is the head, the field character is its abdomen, and the head and tail are two pairs of backward sweeping lines at a certain angle with the body, indicating the locust tentacles and hind legs, and other parts are omitted. Jin Wen emphasizes the head, protruding the tentacles and mouth to emphasize that locusts eat crops. The seal script undertook the neatness of the golden text, and after the change, the letter was written in yellow, and the simplified characters were written in yellow. The yellow character becomes a cursive word, which has nothing to do with grass. The yellow characters are pronounced from the sounds made during the locust plague. The original meaning of locusts, commonly known as grasshoppers.
Yellow Oracle Bone Glyph (Han Dian)
According to the Shuowen Jiezi, the yellow character is "the color of the earth, from Tian Congyu [guāng] (tongguang)". This is an extension of the yellow word. "Ziyuan" believes that the yellow character oracle bone is shaped like a person carrying a jade on his chest. The Dictionary of Chinese Character Origins and Streams believes that Huang is the first text of the Huang character, which is a kind of jade pendant. Pei Yuzhi's statement is too far-fetched to explain the extended meaning of the yellow character.
The Evolution of the Yellow Character (Etymology)
The yellow characters originally mean locusts. There are many kinds of locusts, and there is only one kind of locust plague that really constitutes locusts, that is, the East Asian flying locust. The physical characteristics of this locust are a protective color, the same as the color of the land. Flying yellow Tengda, perhaps the original meaning is to describe the locust plague.
Locusts (Web Image)
When locusts are infested, the ancients may have thought that the Emperor God sent to punish mankind, so Huang is also called locusts - the worms of the Emperor God. In this way, people not only did not dare to kill the plagued locusts, but also feared that killing the locusts would offend the emperor. Therefore, whenever there is a plague of locusts, they are left to devour crops and are helpless, resulting in a large-scale reduction in grain production or even a loss of harvest.
Locust Plague (Web Photo)
Even in the tang dynasty, when locust plagues occurred in Shandong, Henan, Hebei and other places, local officials still believed that this was a punishment from heaven and did not dare to hunt locusts. To this end, the imperial court held a special meeting to discuss, and finally decided to hunt and kill.
However, perhaps because of the taboo that yellow is a locust, afraid of attracting real locusts, the yellow word no longer refers to locusts, but instead refers to the protective color of locusts, earth yellow, specifically referring to the color of loess. Eastern Han Dynasty Wang Chong "On Heng Qi [yàn] Fu": Yellow is earth color, located in the center.
With the development of society, human beings have a deeper understanding of color, and the yellow character has also evolved from earth yellow to various yellows. The names of Chinese pigment yellow are: male yellow, female yellow, stone yellow, male essence, earth yellow, Zhang Dan, Garcinia yellow, locust yellow, gardenia. Modern people take yellow as one of the basic colors that make up various colors, and this yellow is the color of positive yellow, female yellow.
From ancient times to the Qin and Han dynasties, only one river character was used to refer to the Yellow River. Perhaps because the Yellow River Basin is the main area where locust plagues often occur, people later added a yellow character in front of the river character, called the Yellow River.
Yellow River (Web Image)
The places through which the Yellow River flows are also named with yellow characters, such as the Loess Plateau and the Loess Plateau. The water of the Yellow River brings loess silt and silts the river, causing many diversions, causing serious losses to people's lives and property, and forming a yellow pan area, known as the Yellow Plague. Successive dynasties have governed the Yellow River. In modern times, the Yellow River is referred to as Huang, such as Zhi Huang, Huang Huai (the combined name of the Yellow River and the Huai River).
In ancient times, people who grew up in the Yellow River Basin were not aware of natural phenomena such as spring, summer, autumn and winter, wind, rain, thunder and lightning, so they thought that there must be a god who controlled and managed, so that the spring, summer, autumn and winter were in order, and the wind and rain were smooth. If there is a natural disaster, it must be that people have done something wrong, and the gods are angry and bring disaster to the earth.
People naturally associate the plague of locusts with the highest god imagined, that is, the Yellow Emperor, who dominates everything in the yellow land and uses natural disasters to punish people who make mistakes on the earth.
The Yellow Emperor can do anything (web image)
The two largest natural disasters are the yellow plague caused by the heavy rainstorm causing the yellow river breach, and the second is the locust plague caused by the flying locusts that overwhelmed the earth in the year of the great drought. The yellow plague destroyed the cave dwellings and drowned many people; the locust plague ate crops, the grain was not harvested, and many people starved to death. Judging from the original meaning of the yellow character, the locust plague is the yellow plague.
In order to pray for blessings and avoid disasters, people praised the Yellow Emperor, let the Yellow Emperor have all kinds of divine skills, omnipotent, and even attributed the things that were originally created and invented by people to the Yellow Emperor, and also regarded themselves as the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, making him happy, letting him care for and bless his descendants, and not to be angry and send disasters to the world. People also built the Yellow Emperor Mausoleum and many Yellow Emperor Temples to carry out sacrifices and blessing activities. This may be the reason why the worship of the Yellow Emperor's mausoleum continues today.
Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor
In the year of drought, coupled with the occurrence of locust plagues, crops either died of drought or were eaten by locusts, resulting in a large-scale reduction in production or even a lack of harvest. By extension, things fail and plans cannot be realized. For example, if this thing is not done well, it will be yellow.
Several derivatives of Huang are associated with locusts: (1) springs, flakes used in musical instruments to make sounds. It is a musical instrument made of bamboo pieces that people imitate locusts rubbing their wings to make sounds, hence the writing spring. (2) Guang (simplified word wide), the locusts that spread over the mountains, extending to a vast area. (3) Horizontal, a large number of locusts lie on the branches of the trees and eat the leaves. For example, flying to the disaster. By extension, it is perpendicular to the ground. Originally, the word originally meant perpendicular to the ground was a balance, and the original meaning was to be mounted on the front of the single-wheeled cart, so that the two horses or cattle maintained balance and did not pull the wood. In the Warring States period, the combination of vertical and horizontal, the original writing was from Lianheng.
In ancient times, there was a Yellow Kingdom, in present-day Huangchuan County, Henan Province. Huangchuan County has the HuangHe River, which is an important tributary of the Huai River. According to records, there used to be a frequent locust plague here, the largest of which was in 1942. Ancient people must have been impressed by the locust plague, so they recorded the appearance of the locust with symbols, which is yellow. Perhaps it was the clan that often caused locust plagues to establish the Fang Kingdom and named it Huang. As a result, Huangchuan became the birthplace of the Huang surname.
The seat of the ancient Huang Kingdom - Huangchuan County, Henan
According to the literature, the origin of the Huang surname is:
1. Derived from the name of the country. After Bo Yi, the chief of the Dongyi tribe in the Emperor Shun era, after Shaohao of the Jin Tian clan in the Five Emperors era, and after Lu Zhong, the son of Wu Hui (Zhu Rong), the ancient fire official, all established the Yellow Kingdom, and the descendants of the country were named after the clan.
2. Derived from an official position. After the ancient Fuxi subordinate official Huang Longshi, and after the Yellow Emperor's subordinate official Huang Yun, they were all called clans by ancestral officials.
3. Originating from ethnic minorities. There are Huang clan members among the Hui and Manchus.
The current population of the Huang surname is more than 26.8 million (2020), ranking 7th by population.
Poetry:
The yellow character originally means flying locust,
It is suspected that the emperor has sent misfortune to heaven.
Sacrifice to the Yellow Emperor to the present,
They all regard Xuanyuan as their ancestors.