A wee bit of culture from the People’s Daily:
Surname Qu originated from the name of a place.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, king Wu of State of Chu conferred his son Xia with Qu Yi as feud to commend his outstanding service in the court, therefore the people used the name Qu Xia to address Xia. The offspring of Xia adopted Qu as their surnames thereafter.
The royal family of State of Chu was descendants of Zhuanxu, the grandson of Emperor Huangdi, therefore Qu is also offspring of Emperor Huangdi. During the resign of North Wei Dynasty, the people with surname of Qutu adopted Qu as their surname.
Qu Yuan, the patriotic poet of the State of Chu in the Warring States Period is the most noted one among people surnamed Qu. His works Li Sao and Chu Ci are still read widely today. On May 5th every year, dragon boat races are held across the country in memory of Qu Yuan. The great litterateur Qu Dajun and scholar Qu Xia in Qing Dynasty are also well-known.
Chinese surnames are a science all in themselves. Here are the top ten names: Zhang, Wang, Li, Zhao, Chen, Yang, Wu, Liu, Huang and Zhou. Apparently these ten names account for 40% of the Chinese popuation, that is, half a billion people! I think we may look at the history of some of these names in the upper intermediate lessons.
Ken Carroll 凯恩
One of the coolest things I’ve found about Chinese name is regarding the generational name. As you probably know, the first character of a Chinese name is the family name and the remainder is the given name–usually two characters, with the first being a generational identifier common to all members of a generation. For example, if you are Chen Xin An, your siblings and cousins would all be Chen Xin .
What’s coolest, though, is how the generational names are chosen–they can’t be left for brothers and cousins to argue over, after all
I’ve heard that it is standard practice for the generational names to read out a poem or story as they are put in sequence.
My Chinese husband and his siblings have this name thing too but on the second character of their given name.
My husband’s given name is Jing Hong, his siblings are called: Jiang Hong, Chun Hong, Li Hong, Long Hong.
I thought this is quite funny. My German family members though always have problems to remember who is who because of that. ^_^