Hello everyone, I am Haotong, a post-90s editor who focuses on ancient Chinese history
Emperor Taizong of Tang and Emperor Liu Che of the Han Dynasty were both very famous feudal emperors in the history of our country. But it is estimated that many friends will have a doubt in their hearts, that is, the same emperor, why Li Shimin is called Zong, and Liu Che is called emperor. If you have this doubt in front of the screen, then don't worry, you can continue to read down
(Friends who can't wait can just slide directly to the end to see the answer).
Remarks, the following are HaoTong's personal opinions, do not like to spray, thank you.
First, temple numbers are scarce
In order to facilitate memory, we people refer to Liu Che as Emperor Wu of Han, but in fact his full name should be Emperor Wu of Han. Among them, Han Shizong was his temple name, Emperor Wu was his nickname, and Liu Che was his name. Before the Tang Dynasty, the temple number was definitely a good thing, especially in the Han Dynasty, and the temple number was even more cherished and outrageous.
There may be an elder brother wondering why Haotong would say this. In fact, it is very simple, the Han Dynasty lasted for more than 400 years, a total of 24 emperors, but there were only seven people with temple numbers. These seven included Liu Bang of Han Gaozu (Taizu), Liu Heng of Han Wendi (Emperor Taizong), Liu Che of Han Wu (Sejong), Liu Qing of Han Xuan (Emperor Zhongzong), Liu Yi of Han Yuan Emperor (Emperor Gaozong), Liu Xiu of Han Guangwu (Shizu), Liu Zhuang of HanMing Emperor (Emperor Xianzong), and Liu Ju of Hanzhang (Suzong).
It is not difficult to see from this that because of the scarcity of temple numbers, we cannot directly use this to refer to them. But you can't use the temple number and can't call it by its name, so what should you do? Finally, a wise historian suggested that it was possible to use a nickname, because no matter which emperor had a title, and the title was still very short, and only one word was easy to remember. Therefore, we now call the emperors before the Tang Dynasty, most of them are nicknames, such as Emperor Wu of Han and Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei.
Second, the nickname is too long
At the beginning of the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, it was still relatively popular to call the title of emperor, but when the throne passed to Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Li Zhi, new problems arose. At that time, Emperor Gaozong of Tang was ill and could not handle the government from time to time, so he asked Wu Zetian to replace him. However, the government was a big deal after all, and it was naturally inappropriate for Wu Zetian to deal with it only in the name of the empress. So Li Zhi gave the two of them a personal title, Emperor and Queen of Heaven.
But the embarrassing thing is, what if they change their title to the emperor before that? So the clever Li Zhi paid attention to the nickname, and he first changed the nickname for Li Shimin, and then changed the nickname for Li Yuan, and it was all very long. so-called
"The upper beam is not right and the lower beam is crooked",
Later Tang Xuanzong Li Longji saw that his ancestors were having such a good time, so he also joined in, and when he joined, he changed the original already long title to longer and longer, for example, Li Shimin's title was changed from Emperor Wen to Emperor Wenwu Dasheng Daxiao.
Because the name change was too long and played a bad leading role for future generations, contemporary historians once again changed the title from the title to the temple number in order to facilitate memory, that is, the current Tang Taizong, Tang Gaozong.
Here Hao Tong has two more words, after the Tang Dynasty, in addition to calling the temple number, it will also be called the year number, that is, Jiajing, Wanli, Kangxi, Qianlong, etc. in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, so why is this? As far as Hao Tong knows personally, the emperors before the Ming Dynasty were very fond of changing the era name, for example, the Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin had three era names, and the empress Wu Zetian even had 18 era names. However, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, because of the ancestral training established by Zhu Yuanzhang, it was basically an emperor and an era name
(One dollar).
And the title is for convenience, so later historians will be the Emperor of the Ming and Qing Dynasties no longer called the temple number or the nickname, but changed to the era name, anyway, an emperor only has one year number, and there will be no bad or wrong things. In summary, the reason why the Tang Dynasty was called emperor before was because the titles were complete and simple. The reason why the Tang Dynasty was called Zong after that was because the temple number was complete and simple.
Calendar year today: On July 13, 1402, Zhu Di occupied Nanjing under the name of "Qing Junfang", and the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao disappeared; on July 13, 1900, the Eight-Power Alliance captured Tianjin;