The Hundred Family Surnames (Chinese: 百家姓), commonly known as Bai Jia Xing,[1] also translated as Hundreds of Chinese Surnames,[2] is a classic Chinese text composed of common Chinese surnames. An unknown author compiled the book during the Song dynasty (960–1279).[3] The book lists 507 surnames.[3] Of these, 441 are single-character surnames and 66 are double-character surnames.[3] About 800 names have been derived from the original ones.[4]
In the dynasties following the Song, the 13th-century Three Character Classic, the Hundred Family Surnames, and the 6th-century Thousand Character Classic came to be known as San Bai Qian (Three, Hundred, Thousand), from the first character in their titles. They served as instructional books for children,[5] becoming the almost universal introductory literary texts for students (almost exclusively boys) from elite backgrounds and even for a number of ordinary villagers. Each text was available in many versions, printed cheaply and available to all since they did not become superseded. When a student had memorized all three, he had a knowledge of roughly 2,000 characters. Since Chinese did not use an alphabet, this was an effective, though time-consuming, way of giving a crash course in character-recognition before going on to understanding texts and writing characters.[6]
The work is a rhyming poem in lines of eight characters. The surnames are not listed in order of commonality. According to Song dynasty scholar Wang Mingqing (王明清), the first four surnames listed represent the most important families in the empire at the time:[7]
^Zhang, Jiansong; Shen, Haixiong (March 5, 2006). ""百家姓"排列终有序。姓氏文化有何内涵？" [The "Hundred Family Surnames" are finally arranged in order. What is the cultural meaning of the surnames?]. Xinhua News Agency. Archived from the original on November 8, 2014.
^Chen Danning (September 3, 2014). 钱氏修"百家姓"将钱姓排第2位 钱王妃子姓氏靠前 (in Chinese). China News. Retrieved November 7, 2014.
Hundred Family Surnames public domain audiobook at LibriVox in mandarin
