There is no tiger surname in the hundred family names, but some people have the surname tiger and call the tiger a cat. Guangzhou actress Hu Yanfen, who played the "second sister-in-law" in "Foreign Daughter-in-law Local Lang", is one of them. When she was interviewed by me that year, she said that her ancestors had been great generals in Sichuan, and after the great general who was not originally surnamed Hu was given the "Tiger Head Banner" by the emperor, he changed his surname to Tiger. Then, because of the great general's suffering, the clan deliberately pronounced the word tiger as "cat"... It is suspected that Hu Yanfen's ancestral hometown is the new capital of Chengdu Longhu Village, and people still call the tiger a "cat", and many embarrassing jokes have been made.
01
There is no tiger surname in the "Hundred Family Names", and there are only five cases of Tiger names included in the "Dictionary of Chinese Names". In Guangzhou, which has a population of about 13 million, there are also very few people with the surname Tiger. Guangzhou actress Hu Yanfen, who played the "second sister-in-law" in "Foreign Daughter-in-law Local Lang", is undoubtedly a major celebrity of the Tiger clan today. Although Hu Yanfen was born in Guangzhou, her ancestral home is in Sichuan, and strictly speaking, she is not a native of Guangdong.
Hu Yanfen, who grew up in Guangzhou, rarely saw anyone with the same surname as her, and even when she traveled to other places, she rarely met her own "kind", which made her feel that the tiger surname was indeed different. The tiger clan members who are most familiar with them are their fathers, aunts, juniors, etc., but in total, there are only more than 20 people. Usually, I only hear that there are Hu people from Henan and Sichuan who work and earn a living in Guangzhou.
Hu Yanfen did not know when her ancestors moved to Guangzhou, only that her ancestors were relegated to Guangdong. After he arrived in Guangdong, he took his family to work as a small official, and his descendants eventually settled in the Dongshan area of Guangzhou. "During the Cultural Revolution, the four treasures of the literary house and the official seals and other objects held by the ancestors of the officials were all taken away one by one, so that we could not understand the history of the family inheritance." Hu Yanfen said.
02
"Because this surname is so rare, some people register my name and think I should be 'Yu'." Hu Yanfen's surname occasionally brings embarrassment to her. Once, Hu Yanfen asked the waiter to register his name, and the other party insisted on writing the word "tiger" as "Yu". Hu Yanfen immediately proposed not to be called "Yu Yanfen". But the waiter replied unhappily: "There is no such surname in the hundred family names, it should be the surname 'Yu', right?" How can the surname be Tiger? ”。 After Hu Yanfen insisted, the waiter changed "Yu" to "tiger".
03
Hu Yanfen's father and grandfather have told the "origin of the surname Tiger" that has been passed down from generation to generation, indicating that their original surname was not the surname Tiger. Originally, Hu Yanfen's ancestors lived in Xindu County, Sichuan (suspected to be the Xindu District of present-day Chengdu), and one of them became a great general because of his outstanding military achievements, and the emperor gave him the "Tiger Head Banner" for this. Feeling the emperor's grace, this ancestor decided to change his original surname to Tiger, so "future generations are surnamed Tiger".
After a while, the great general made a big mistake, and the emperor ordered his family not to take the surname of Tiger. Perhaps to avoid secrecy, or to thank the emperor, the Tiger Clan has since retained the word "tiger", but deliberately pronounced "tiger" as "cat". As for the specific reasons for calling "tigers" "cats", Hu Yanfen said that she had never heard the elders talk about them.
"Grandpa may have been relegated to Guangdong for unknown reasons, but in Guangdong he is no longer called 'cat'." Hu Yanfen said that after her grandfather was demoted to Guangdong, there were still petty officials to do it, and her descendants also had official positions, until her grandfather's generation began to decline and become a commoner. As for whether the Tiger Clan people in their ancestral homeland still called "Tiger" a "cat", they did not know, nor did they go back to visit.
04
In order to find out, I went to Longhu Village in Xindu District, Chengdu. I learned locally that there are indeed villagers in Xindu whose surname is "tiger" but pronounces "cat", and everyone is called this way, and it is customary to become natural. There are more than a dozen villagers with the surname "cat" in Longhu Village, and the parents are close relatives between the parents. There is a "Tiger Family Temple" in the village that is also pronounced as "Cat Family Ancestral Hall", which is said to be the place where the "Cat" surname is dedicated to the ancestors. They are not clear about the origin and allusion of the villagers' surname "tiger" and reading "cat", but there is a common understanding - the ancestors of the villagers believed that cats were tigers, tigers were cats, and calling them was the same thing. In contact with these villagers, they cannot be called Mr. Tiger, Miss Tiger, or Little Tiger, but only Mr. Cat, Miss Cat, and Kitten. Unless it is acceptable for acquaintances to joke with each other, otherwise people will be unhappy.
05
In fact, there are also villagers in Zhaotong, Yunnan Province, who read tigers as "cats", and their "relatives" are mainly distributed in northwest China, as well as Nanjing, Luoyang and Chengdu. Whether there is an inevitable or accidental connection between them remains to be examined. The tiger surname probably has two origins: one is from the tiger surname among ethnic minorities, which is generally taken from the first sound of the ancestral name; the other is from the descendants of BoHu, one of the "eight yuan" of the ancient Shunchen. According to legend, Bohu was a minister of the Emperor and an important source of today's Tiger family.
(If you like plain and profound exclusive original American text, please click by the bamboo micro book.) Image from the web)
