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.
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
5.
Wokou
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Wokou, which literally translates to Japanese pirates or dwarf pirates, were pirates who raided the coastlines of China, Japan and Korea. Wokou came from a mixture of ethnicities, the term wokou is a combination of Wō, referring to either dwarfs or pejoratively to the Japanese, and kòu bandit. There are two eras of wokou piracy. The early wokou mostly set up camp on Japanese outlying islands, the early wokou raided the Japanese themselves as well as China and Korea. The first recorded use of the wokou is on the Gwanggaeto Stele. The stele states that wokou crossed the sea and were defeated by him in the year 404, records report that the main camps of the early wokou were the island of Tsushima, Iki Island, and the Gotō Islands. In 1405 Ashikaga Yoshimitsu sent twenty captured pirates to China, where they were boiled in a cauldron in Ningbo, according to Korean records, wako pirates were particularly rampant roughly from 1350. After almost annual invasions of the provinces of Jeolla and Gyeongsang, they migrated northwards to the Chungcheong. The wako pirates were effectively expelled through the use of gunpowder technology, Korea launched attacks on pirate bases on Tsushima in 1419 with the Gihae Eastern Expedition. General Yi Jongmus fleet of 227 ships and 17,285 soldiers set off from Geoje Island toward Tsushima on June 19,1419, the routes of the Korean attack were guided by captured Japanese pirates. After landing, General Yi Jongmu first sent captured Japanese pirates as emissaries to ask for surrender, when he received no reply, he sent out his forces and the soldiers proceeded to raid the pirates and destroy their settlements. The Korean army destroyed 129 boats,1939 houses and killed or enslaved 135 coastal residents as well as rescuing 131 Chinese, the number of Wokou raids dropped dramatically after the Korean expedition. Some of the forts built for defense against Wokou can still be found in Zhejiang. Among them are the well-restored Pucheng Fortress and Chongwu Fortress, as well as the ruins of the Liuao Fortress in Liuao, according to the History of Ming, thirty percent of the 16th century wokou were Japanese, seventy percent were ethnic Chinese. Two well known Chinese military figures involved in the combating of Wokou are Qi Jiguang, Yu Dayou was a general of the Ming dynasty who was assigned to defend the coast against the Japanese pirates. At the time he was only twenty-six years old, on the eve of the next year he was promoted to full Commissioner in Zhejiang because of his successes. The identity of the wokou is subject to debate, with various theories about the ethnic makeup. Professor Takeo Tanaka of University of Tokyo proposed in 1966 that the wokou were Koreans living on these outlying islands
6.
Jiajing Emperor
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The Jiajing Emperor was the 11th emperor of the Chinese Ming dynasty who ruled from 1521 to 1567. Born Zhu Houcong, he was the former Zhengde Emperors cousin and his father, Zhu Youyuan, the Prince of Xing, was the fourth son of the Chenghua Emperor and the eldest son of three sons born to the emperors concubine, Lady Shao. The Jiajing Emperors regnal name, Jiajing, means admirable tranquility, born as heir apparent of a vassal prince, Zhu Houcong was not brought up to succeed to the throne. However, the throne became vacant in 1521 with the death of the Hongzhi Emperors son, the Zhengde Emperor. As the Jiajing Emperor, Zhu Houcong had his parents posthumously elevated to an honorary imperial rank, custom dictated that an emperor who was not an immediate descendant of the previous one should be adopted by the previous one, to maintain an unbroken line. Such a posthumous adoption of Zhu Houcong by the Hongzhi Emperor was proposed and this conflict is known as the Great Rites Controversy. The Jiajing Emperor prevailed and hundreds of his opponents were banished, flogged in the imperial court, among the banished was the poet Yang Shen. The Jiajing Emperor was also known to be a cruel and self-aggrandizing emperor, ignoring state affairs, the Jiajing Emperor relied on Zhang Cong and Yan Song to handle affairs of state. Ministers such as Hai Rui and Yang Xusheng challenged and even chastised Yan Song, Hai Rui and many ministers were eventually dismissed or executed. Only Yan Song, a few handful of eunuchs and Daoist priests ever saw the emperor and this eventually led to corruption at all levels of the Ming government. However, the Jiajing Emperor was intelligent and managed to control the court, the Jiajing Emperors ruthlessness also led to an internal plot by his concubines to assassinate him in October,1542 by strangling him while he slept. A group of maids who had had enough of the emperors cruelty decided to band together to murder him. Meanwhile, some of the palace maids involved began to panic. The Ming dynasty had enjoyed a period of peace. In 1550, he reached the suburbs of Beijing. Eventually the Ming government appeased him by granting special trading rights, the Ming government also had to deal with wokou pirates attacking the southeastern coastline. Starting in 1550, Beijing was enlarged by the addition of the outer city, the deadliest earthquake of all times, the Shaanxi earthquake of 1556 that killed over 800,000 people, occurred during the Jiajing Emperors reign. The Jiajing Emperor was a follower of Taoism and attempted to suppress Buddhism
7.
Junk (ship)
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A junk is an ancient Chinese sailing ship design that is still in use today. Junks were used as seagoing vessels as early as the 2nd century AD and they evolved in the later dynasties, and were used throughout Asia for extensive ocean voyages. They were found, and in numbers are still found, throughout South-East Asia and India. Found more broadly today is a number of modern recreational junk-rigged sailboats. The term junk may be used to cover many kinds of boat—ocean-going, cargo-carrying, pleasure boats and they vary greatly in size and there are significant regional variations in the type of rig, however they all employ fully battened sails. The term ultimately stems from the Chinese chuán, also based on and pronounced as in the Min Nan variant of Chinese, or zhōu and it entered the English language in the 17th century through the Portuguese junco from the Malay jong or Javanese djong. The modern Standard Chinese word for a wooden cargo vessel is cáo. That said, there are divergent views on this, Pierre-Yves Manguin, amongst others, most scholars consider it was the early Song Dynasty before the fully developed hull forms and rigs were in regular use in offshore trade. The fully developed junk design exhibited innovative, though very little further developed sail plans. There is no evidence that these were adopted in Western shipbuilding by direct emulation, in this case, as in so many others, parallel invention, often in response to quite different hydrodynamic, aerodynamic or technical stimuli, is the historically better evidenced explanation. The structure and flexibility of junk sails make the junk fast, the sails of a junk can be moved inward toward the long axis of the ship. In theory this closeness of what is called sheeting allowed the junk to sail into the wind, in practice, evidenced both by traditional sailing routes and seasons and textual evidence junks neither could nor sail well into the wind. In the typical junk these were both ill-adapted to windward work because, put simply, junks were neither intended to nor designed to work to windward. The sails include several members, called battens, which in principle could provide shape and strength but in practice, because of the available materials and technology. The sails can also be easily reefed to accommodate various wind strengths, the battens also make the sails more resistant than other sails to large tears, as a tear is typically limited to a single panel between battens. In South China the sails have a curved roach especially towards the head, the main drawback to the junk sail is its high weight caused by the 6 to 15 heavy full length battens. With high weight aloft and no keel, junks were known to capsize when lightly laden due to their high centre of gravity. The top batten is heavier and similar to a gaff, in principle junk sails have much in common with the most aerodynamically efficient sails used today in windsurfers or catamarans
8.
Tanegashima
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Tanegashima is one of the Ōsumi Islands belonging to Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The island,444.99 km² in area, is the second largest of the Ōsumi Islands, access to the island is by ferry, or by air to New Tanegashima Airport. Administratively, the island is divided into the city, Nishinoomote, the towns belong to Kumage District. Tanegashima is the easternmost and the second largest of the Osumi Islands and it is located approximately 43 kilometres south of the southern tip of Osumi Peninsula in southern Kyushu, or 115 kilometres south of Kagoshima. The Vincennes Strait separates it from Yakushima, the island is of volcanic origin, however, unlike neighboring Yakushima, it presents a flat appearance, with its highest elevation at only 282 metres above sea level. The island has a length of 57 kilometres and a width ranging from 5 kilometres to 10 kilometres, Tanegashima has a long history with Kofun. Other burials on Tanegashima, namely the Yokomine and Hirota sites, the artifacts include magatama, an engraved pendant, and emblems with apparent writing. During the Nara period, the state of Japan began to contact Tanegashima, according to the Nihonshoki, the imperial court banqueted islanders of Tanegashima in 677. In 679, the court sent to the island a mission, other missions to the island mentioned in the book were of 683 and 695. According to the Shoku Nihongi, people from Tane, Yaku, Amami and these activities resulted in the establishment of Tane Province on the island in 702. Tane Province lasted until 824 and was merged into Ōsumi Province, sometime around 1140, the whole island of Tanegashima became part of the Shimazu Estate, the largest medieval shōen of Japan. In the early Kamakura period, the positions of the steward of the Shimazu Estate. However, the clan lost these positions to the Hōjō clan, the Hōjō clan sent the Higo clan as deputy governors. A branch line of the Higo clan made itself autonomous on Tanegashima after the Hōjō clan was annihilated, the Tanegashima clan ruled the island until the Meiji restoration. The Tanegashima clan enjoyed a degree of autonomy until Shimazu unified southern Kyūshū in the late 16th century. Following the Meiji restoration, the island has been administered as part of Kagoshima Prefecture, Tanegashima is traditionally known as the site of the introduction of European firearms to Japan in 1542. Until modern times, firearms were known in Japan as Tanegashima. However, Mendes Pinto does appear to have visited Tanegashima soon thereafter, the Europeans had arrived to trade, not only guns, but also soap, tobacco and other goods unknown in medieval Japan, for the Japanese goods
