"Zhao Qiansun Li, Zhou Wu Zheng Wang" in the "Hundred Family Names" opening several surnames, we are always the most familiar. Surnames in China have a history of thousands of years and have existed since the beginning of civilization. The original origin of the surname was based on the primitive religious worship of the "Heavenly Path" and the worship of totems and ancestors, and later gradually evolved into a sign of blood relations, so that each person had his own surname at birth.
However, surnames are not permanently inherited, and some surnames will gradually evolve into other surnames, some evolved according to official positions, and some evolved from fiefdoms. For example, the surname "Shangguan" evolved from the official position, and king Huai of Chu named his younger son Gongzi Lan as Shangguan Yi Dafu, and Gongzi Lan's descendants took the surname of Yi and called Shangguan.
Therefore, if we go up, many surnames have their own "ancestral surnames", which is the source of this surname, and the surname we say today is even more "the ancestor of all surnames". It is no exaggeration to say that more than half of the surnames in China are derived from this surname layer by layer.
This surname is the surname of Ji, which is the first of the eight surnames in ancient times, the surname of the Yellow Emperor. The "Chinese Jin Language" records: "Xi Shaodian, married to the Youyu clan, gave birth to the Yellow Emperor, the Yellow Emperor was made of Ji Shuicheng, and became a different virtue, so the Yellow Emperor was Ji. Therefore, in history, the original name of the Yellow Emperor was also called Ji Xuanyuan.
Later, the Yellow Emperor defeated the Yan Emperor, and the two tribes gradually merged to become the Huaxia tribe, and now we often call ourselves "Descendants of Yan Huang" because most of our surnames now say that there is the "Jiang" surname of the Yan Emperor, and the "Ji" surname of the Yellow Emperor is derived.
Emperor Yan's Jiang surname spent a total of 64 single surnames such as Lü, Xu, and Xie, and 38 compound surnames such as Chunyu, Dongguo, and Gaotang, which is a relatively large number, but compared with the Ji surname, it is a small witch.
The Ji surname directly deducted 411 surnames such as Zhou, Wu, Zheng, Wang, Lu, and Cao, and these 411 surnames accounted for 82% of the total number of "Hundred Family Names".
And these 411 surnames are still only directly derived from the Ji surname, and the surnames that are played by the 411 surnames are even more numerous, so the Ji surname is a veritable "ancestor of all surnames", incomparably honorable.
However, the population of the Ji surname itself is not much, and the Ji surname is located in the 297th place of the "Hundred Family Names", with a population of about 540,000. It accounts for only two-tenths of China's total population, so many people have not even met the surname, and the scale of today is inseparable from the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty.
We know that the national surname of the Zhou Dynasty is the Surname of Ji, the King of Zhou Wen Ji Chang and the King of Zhou Wu Ji Fa are well-known figures, the Zhou Dynasty after the development of the sub-feudal system, many descendants of the royal family of the Ji surname were divided into various regions for development, the population has been further exaggerated, and gradually covered the entire middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River.
However, many descendants of the same surname have changed their original surnames based on the region and fiefdom, so the population of the Ji surname is getting smaller and smaller. On the contrary, the population of sub-surnames evolved from the Ji surname is increasing. For example, according to the 2018 census data, the population of Wang surnamed Wang in Chinese mainland alone reached 101.5 million people, which is the largest surname in the population. There are also Cao surnames, Zhou surnames, etc. are all large surnames with a large population, which also reflects the greatness of the Ji surname, worthy of China's "ancestor of ten thousand surnames".