| Hundred Family Surnames | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 百家姓 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanyu Pinyin | Bǎijiā Xìng | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese alphabet | Bách gia tính | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ChữHán | 百家姓 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Korean name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hangul | 백가성 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanja | 百家姓 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Japanese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kanji | 百家姓 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kana | ひゃっかせい | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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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 504 surnames. Of these,444 are single-character surnames and 60 are double-character surnames. About 800 names have been derived from the original ones. [4]
Contents
- Form
- Complete text
- Prevalence in modern times
- Under 300th most common
- Under 400th most common
- See also
- Explanatory notes
- References
- Citations
- Sources
- External links
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 Each text was available in many versions,printed cheaply and available to all since they did not become superseded.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 studying character-recognition before going on to understanding texts and writing characters. [6]
