1.
Chinese name
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Chinese personal names are names used by those from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora overseas. Prior to the 20th century, educated Chinese also utilized a courtesy name or style name called zi by which they were known among those outside of their family and closest friends. From at least the time of the Shang dynasty, the Han Chinese observed a number of naming taboos regulating who may or may not use a given name. In general, using the given name connoted the speakers authority, peers and younger relatives were barred from speaking it. Owing to this, many historical Chinese figures – particularly emperors – used a half-dozen or more different names in different contexts and those possessing names identical to the emperors were frequently forced to change them. Although some terms in the ancient Chinese naming system, such as xìng and míng, are used today, they were used in different. Commoners possessed only a name, and the modern concept of a surname or family name did not yet exist at any level of society.3 billion citizens. In fact, just the top three – Wang, Li, and Zhang – cover more than 20% of the population. This homogeneity results from the majority of Han family names having only one character. Chinese surnames arose from two separate traditions, the xìng and the shì. The original xìng were clans of royalty at the Shang court, the shì did not originate from families, but denoted fiefs, states, and titles granted or recognized by the Shang court. Apart from the Jiang and Yao families, the original xìng have nearly disappeared, xìng is now used to describe the shì surnames which replaced them, while shì is used to refer to maiden names. The enormous modern clans sometimes share ancestral halls with one another, nonetheless, however tenuous these bonds sometimes are, it remains a minor taboo to marry someone with the same family name. In modern mainland China, it is the norm that a woman keeps her name unchanged. A child usually inherits his/her fathers surname, though the law explicitly states that a child may use either parents or the grandparents. It is also possible, though far less common, for a child to both parents surnames. In the older generations, it was common for a married woman to prepend her husbands surname to her own. This practice is now almost extinct in mainland China, though there are a few such as the name change of Gu Kailai, but survives in some Hong Kong, Macau
2.
Chinese surname
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Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities. In ancient times two types of surnames existed, namely xing or lineage names, and shi or clan names, Chinese family names are patrilineal, passed from father to children. Women do not normally change their surnames upon marriage, except in places with more Western influences such as Hong Kong, traditionally Chinese surnames have been exogamous. The colloquial expressions laobaixing and bǎixìng are used in Chinese to mean ordinary folks, prior to the Warring States period, only the ruling families and the aristocratic elite had surnames. Historically there was also a difference between clan names or xing and lineages names or shi, Xing were surnames held by the noble clans. They generally are composed of a nü radical which has taken by some as evidence they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages. Another hypothesis has been proposed by sinologist Léon Vandermeersch upon observation of the evolution of characters in oracular scripture from the Shang dynasty through the Zhou, the female radical seems to appear at the Zhou period next to Shang sinograms indicating an ethnic group or a tribe. This combination seems to designate specifically a female and could mean lady of such or such clan, prior to the Qin Dynasty China was largely a fengjian society. In this way, a nobleman would hold a shi and a xing, after the states of China were unified by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC, surnames gradually spread to the lower classes and the difference between xing and shi blurred. Many shi surnames survive to the present day, according to Kiang Kang-Hu, there are 18 sources from which Chinese surnames may be derived, while others suggested at least 24. The following are some of the sources, Xing, These were usually reserved for the central lineage of the royal family. Of these xings, only Jiang and Yao have survived in their form to modern days as frequently occurring surnames. Royal decree by the Emperor, such as Kuang, state name, Many nobles and commoners took the name of their state, either to show their continuing allegiance or as a matter of national and ethnic identity. These are some of the most common Chinese surnames, name of a fief or place of origin, Fiefdoms were often granted to collateral branches of the aristocracy and it was natural as part of the process of sub-surnaming for their names to be used. An example is Di, Marquis of Ouyangting, whose descendants took the surname Ouyang, there are some two hundred examples of this identified, often of two-character surnames, but few have survived to the present. Names of an ancestor, Like the previous example, this was also a common origin with close to 500 or 600 examples,200 of which are two-character surnames, often an ancestors courtesy name would be used. For example, Yuan Taotu took the character of his grandfathers courtesy name Boyuan as his surname. Sometimes titles granted to ancestors could also be taken as surnames, seniority within the family, In ancient usage, the characters of meng, zhong, shu and ji were used to denote the first, second, third and fourth eldest sons in a family
3.
Wang (surname)
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Wang is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surnames 王 and 汪. Wáng was listed 8th on the famous Song Dynasty list of the Hundred Family Surnames, Wāng was 104th of the Hundred Family Surnames, it is the 58th-most-common surname in mainland China. 汪 is typically romanized identically, despite its distinct tone and it is also Wong in Cantonese, Ong or Ang in Hokkien, Wang in Korean, and Ō or Oh in Japanese. However, in Vietnamese, it is written Uông.88 million bearers and it was the 6th most common surname in Taiwan in 2005, comprising 4. 12% of the general population. Wāng was listed by the NCIIS survey as the 58th most common surname in mainland China, Ong is the 5th-most-common surname among Chinese Singaporeans and Wong the 6th. There were 88,000 Wongs during the year 2000 US Census, making it the 7th-most-common surname among Asians and Pacific Islanders, the 63,800 Wangs ranked 10th and 440th, respectively. Wang is a rare surname in South Korea. The year 2000 South Korean Census listed only 23,447 Wangs. 王 is the Chinese word for king, william Baxter and Laurent Sagart reconstructed the Old Chinese form of Wáng as *ɢʷaŋ and the Middle Chinese as hjwang. The most ancient family name of Wáng was originated from the surname Zi, the Chinese legend mentions that near the end of Shang Dynasty, King Zhou of Shangs uncle Bi Gan, Ji Zi, and Wei Zi were called The Three Kindhearted Men of Shang. King Zhou was violent in his rule, and Bi Gan repeatedly remonstrated to the king regarding his behavior, the king shunned his comments and killed Bi Gan instead. Bis descendants used Wáng as their surname as they are descendants of a prince and were known as The Bi clan of the Wáng family, the Zi clan has existed for about 3100 years through Qin Dynasty to Tang Dynasty and exists today. The Zi clan of Wáng lived predominantly in Henan during these times, more Wáng were originated from the royal family of Zhou Dynasty. The original surname of the family of Zhou Dynasty was Ji. However, many of them have separated out of the due to the loss of power. Because they once belonged to the family, they used Wáng as their surname. This family of Wáng traced its ancestry to Wang Ziqiao According to the records, after King Wu of Zhou defeated the Shang Dynasty. During the reign of the 21st king, King Ling of Zhou, the capital was in Chengzhou, a son of King Ling, Wangzi Qiao or Prince Qiao, was reduced to civilian status due to his remonstration to the king. His son Zong Jin remained as a Situ in the palace, when the 8th generation Wang Cuo became a general in the State of Wei, the clan finally regained its status
4.
Hengyang
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Hengyang is the second largest city of Hunan Province, China. It straddles the Xiang River about 160 km south of the capital of Changsha. Its built-up area made of 4 out of 5 urban districts was home to 1,075,516 inhabitants at the 2010 census and this was the capital of a prefecture in the Tang Dynastys Jiangnan and West Jiangnan circuits. Li Jingxuan was banished to superintendence of Hengzhou after feigning an illness, following the AD705 coup that removed the Empress Wu Zetian from power, her ally Li Jiongxiu was also briefly demoted to superintendence of this province. During the reign of Emperor Muzong, the chancellor Linghu Chu was also demoted to this province for his underlings alleged corruption, upon Zhangs replacement by the former chancellor Lü Yin in 760, however, Chen was placated and then killed in a surprise attack. Xizong confirmed Zhou Yue in all his posts, renaming his circuit Wuan, xizongs brother then gave him additional authority over West Lingnan Circuit. Shortly after, in 893, Deng Chune and Lei Man attacked and killed him, other superintendents included Qi Ying and Xiao Ye. After initially falling to agrarian rebels under Yang Shiyuan, Hengzhou was recovered by the lord of Wuan Ma Yin and he initially supported the Later Liang, then declared himself king in his own right during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. During the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, Wu Sangui declared himself Emperor of the Great Zhou and his grandson Wu Shifan then retreated to Yunnan, and the Ming recovered Hengzhou the next year. The Battle of Hengyang was the longest defense of a city of the entire Second Sino-Japanese War. When Changsha fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on June 19,1944, the reorganized 11th Army, consisting of 10 divisions,4 brigades, and over 110,000 men, assumed the task of attacking Hengyang. It was part of the Japanese Itchi-Go offensive https, //en. m. wikipedia. org/wiki/Operation_Ichi-Go In the 19th century, a Roman Catholic diocese of Hengzhou was established, although periodically suppressed. This was suffragan to the Archbishop of Changhsha following its elevation in 1946, Hengyang has an area of 15,279 km2 and a population of 7,141,162. There are 1,075,516 people in the area of 522 km2 in the 4 central urban districts. Hengyang is a busy and growing industrial City and the transportation centre of Hunan, linking water, rail. Manufacturing includes, chemicals, agricultural, mining equipment, textiles, paper, lead, zinc, coal, and tin are mined nearby. Hengyang is the second largest city in Hunan province, and is an industrial hub. Mount Heng, one of the Five Sacred Mountains, lies 45 kilometres north from the city proper, Hengyang has a humid subtropical climate, with four distinct seasons
5.
Hunan
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Hunan Province is the 7th most populous Province of China and the 10th most extensive by area. The name Hunan means south of Lake Dongting, a lake in the northeast of the province, vehicle license plates from Hunan are marked Xiang, after the Xiang River, which runs from south to north through Hunan and forms part of the largest drainage system for the province. Hunans primeval forests were first occupied by the ancestors of the modern Miao, Tujia, Dong and it entered the written history of China around 350 BC, when under the kings of the Zhou Dynasty, it became part of the State of Chu. After Qin conquered the Chu heartland in 278 BC, the region came under the control of Qin, the agricultural colonization of the lowlands was carried out in part by the Han state, which managed river dikes to protect farmland from floods. To this day many of the villages in Hunan are named after the Han families who settled there. Migration from the north was especially prevalent during the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties Periods, during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, Hunan was home to its own independent regime, Ma Chu. Hunan and Hubei became a part of the province of Huguang until the Qing dynasty, Hunan province was created in 1664 from Huguang, renamed to its current name in 1723. Hunan became an important communications center due to its position on the Yangzi River and it was an important centre of scholarly activity and Confucian thought, particularly in the Yuelu Academy in Changsha. It was also on the Imperial Highway constructed between northern and southern China, the land produced grain so abundantly that it fed many parts of China with its surpluses. The population continued to climb until, by the century, Hunan became overcrowded. Some of the uprisings, such as the ten-year Miao Rebellion of 1795–1806, were caused by ethnic tensions, the Taiping Rebellion began in the south in Guangxi Province in 1850. The rebellion spread into Hunan and then further eastward along the Yangzi River valley, ultimately, it was a Hunanese army under Zeng Guofan who marched into Nanjing to put down the uprising in 1864. Hunan was relatively quiet until 1910 when there were uprisings against the crumbling Qing dynasty and it was led by Hunanese native Mao Zedong, and established a short-lived Hunan Soviet in 1927. The Communists maintained an army in the mountains along the Hunan-Jiangxi border until 1934. Under pressure from the Nationalist Kuomintang forces, they began the Long March to bases in Shaanxi Province, after the departure of the Communists, the KMT army fought against the Japanese in the second Sino-Japanese war. They defended the Changsha until it fell in 1944, japan launched Operation Ichigo, a plan to control the railroad from Wuchang to Guangzhou. Hunan was relatively unscathed by the war that followed the defeat of the Japanese in 1945. In 1949, the Communists returned once more as the Nationalists retreated southward, as Mao Zedongs home province, Hunan supported the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976
6.
Anti-Qing sentiment
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Anti-Qing sentiment refers to a sentiment principally held in China against the Manchu ruling during the Qing dynasty, which was accused by a number of opponents of being barbarian. The Qing was accused of destroying traditional Han culture by forcing Han to wear their hair in a queue in the Manchu style and it was blamed for suppressing Chinese science, causing China to be transformed from the worlds premiere power to a poor, backwards nation. The people of the Eight Banners lived off government pensions unlike the general Han civilian population, the rallying slogan of anti-Qing activists was Fǎn Qīng fù Míng. In the broadest sense, an anti-Qing activist was anyone who engaged in direct action. Hui Muslim Ming loyalists under Mi Layin and Ding Guodong fought against the Qing to restore a Ming prince to the throne from 1646-1650, the Muslim Ming loyalists were supported by Hamis Sultan Said Baba and his son Prince Turumtay. The Muslim Ming loyalists were joined by Tibetans and Han Chinese in the revolt, after fierce fighting, and negotiations, a peace agreement was agreed on in 1649, and Milayan and Ding nominally pledged alleigance to the Qing and were given ranks as members of the Qing military. The Muslim Ming loyalists were crushed by the Qing with 100,000 of them, including Milayin, Ding Guodong. The Confucian Hui Muslim scholar Ma Zhu served with the southern Ming loyalists against the Qing, the Ming loyalist general Zheng Chenggong, better known by his title Koxinga, led a military movement to oppose the Qing dynasty from 1646 to 1662. He established the Kingdom of Tungning on the island of Taiwan, Joseon Korea operated within the Ming tributary system and had a strong alliance with the Ming during the Japanese invasions of Korea. This put Joseon in a dilemma when both Nurhaci and the Ming requested support, King Gwanghaegun tried to maintain neutrality, but most of his officials opposed him for not supporting the Ming, a longstanding ally. In 1623 King Gwanghaegun was deposed and replaced by King Injo, even after the rebellion had been suppressed, King Injo had to devote military forces to ensure the stability of the capital, leaving fewer soldiers to defend the northern borders. The Manchus invaded Korea twice, in 1627 and 1636, eventually forcing Joseon to sever its ties with the Ming, however, there remained popular opposition to the Manchus in Korea. Joseon continued to use the Ming calendar rather than the Qing calendar, after the fall of the Ming dynasty, Joseon Koreans saw themselves as continuing the traditions of Neo-Confucianism. The Mongols under Qing rule were divided into three primary groups- the Inner Mongols, the Outer Khalkha Mongols, and the Eastern Oirat Mongols. The Inner Mongolian Chahar Khan Ligdan Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan, opposed, ejei Khan died in 1661 and was succeeded by his brother Abunai. After Abunai showed disaffection with Manchu Qing rule, he was placed under house arrested in 1669 in Shenyang, the Qing then crushed the rebels in a battle on April 20,1675, killing Abunai and all his followers. The Chahar Mongols were then put under the control of the Qing Emperor unlike the other Inner Mongol leagues which maintained their autonomy. The Khalkha Mongols were more reluctant to come under Qing rule, the Oirat Khoshut Upper Mongols in Qinghai rebelled against the Qing during the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor but were crushed and defeated
7.
Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
8.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
9.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
