What is the origin of the surname Jiang?

The surname Jiang is the 50th most populous surname in China, especially in Shandong, Henan and Northeast China. Today, people with the Jiang surname account for about 0.37% of the country's population, with a total population of about 4.6 million.

The name and totem of ginger: Ginger is a domestic animal. In ancient times, sheep were sacrificed as offerings to gods and ancestors. Extended to auspicious. Ginger is a pictographic character, shaped like a sheep's head, four legs, and a tail. In oracle bone inscriptions, "jiang" and "qiang" have similar shapes, and they are both special characters related to sheep. The clan with the sheep as their totem was later called the Qiang people. "Shuowen" notes: Male Qiang is Qiang, and female Qiang is Jiang. It can be seen that the original meaning of Jiang is a female Qiang person. As the oldest surname in China, "Jiang" also reflects the traces of the surname originating from a matrilineal society in ancient times. The places and rivers where the ginger people stayed for a long time or grazed regularly were called Jiang Di and Jiang Shui, and eventually the surname "Ginger" appeared.

The origin and evolution of the surname Jiang:

The surname Jiang comes from the Shennong family. According to legend, Shaodian married a girl named Yandi, named Lieshan, also known as Shennong. Emperor Yan was born in Jiangshui, in the west of today's Qishan County, Shaanxi Province. Because of the water, his surname was Jiang. Boyi, the descendant of Emperor Yan, was named Taiyue. During the Yu-Xia Dynasty, he assisted Yu in flood control and was granted the title of Lu. He is now in the west of Nanyang, Henan Province. Boyi was the founder of Lu State and a marquis. He was given the surname Jiang again in order to honor Emperor Yan. The State of Lu went through the Xia, Shang and Wednesday dynasties. At the end of the Shang Dynasty, its descendant Lu Xu, also known as Jiang Ziya and Taigong Wang, assisted King Wen of Zhou to destroy the Shang Dynasty. At the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, he was granted the title of Qi and became an important vassal state in the eastern part of the Zhou Dynasty. Since the Xia and Shang Dynasties, the descendants of Emperor Yan with the surname Jiang had more than a dozen states including Qi, Lu, Xu, and Shen in the early Western Zhou Dynasty. Because the Jiang surname originated from the northwest plateau, the people who stayed in Baoji and Longxian, Shaanxi and were brought into Rongdi were called Jiang Rong in history. Later, they gradually moved eastward, and in the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, they moved to the south of Shanxi and attached themselves to Jin. The Qi State was the most powerful branch of the descendants of the Jiang surname. In the middle of the Warring States Period, it was destroyed by the Tian family and their descendants were scattered. Some people thought that the surname was the Qi family, or that the surname was the Jiang family. The Jiang surname has a history of more than 5,000 years, and the As surname began after the fall of Qi, which is at least more than 2,300 years ago.

Integration of foreign genes:

Another surname Jiang comes from a foreign surname. After entering the Han, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, there were turbulent wars in the north, frequent regime changes, people from the Central Plains fled south, and foreigners settled in North China. Incidents of foreign genes flowing into the northern Han people continued to occur. The incorporation of foreign blood into the northern Jiang surname mainly occurred after the Western Han Dynasty. The most important events are: the Wuxing Jiang family of the Liang State in the Northern and Southern Dynasties became the main surname of the Di people; the Yongzhou Shu people of the Northern Wei Dynasty There is also the surname Jiang; the Qiang people in the Tuyuhun tribe of the Northern Song Dynasty also have the surname Jiang; the Manchus in the Qing Dynasty have the surname Jiang and have lived in Shenyang for generations. They first came from the Han people and became Manchus. In the Qing Dynasty, they gradually became Han Chinese with the surname Jiang in the northeastern region. In addition, all the Jiangjia clan and part of the Zhangjia clan in the Eight Banners of Manchuria in the Qing Dynasty collectively changed their surname to Jiang. Therefore, the number of elements added by foreigners to the contemporary Han surname Jiang may far exceed the number of descendants of the original Emperor Yan. The surname Jiang is one of the oldest surnames in China and one of the surnames with the most foreign elements.

The distribution and migration of the Jiang surname in history:

Pre-Qin period. The areas where people with the surname Jiang are active are mainly in Gansu and Shandong. During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Jiang surname had developed into a large clan in the east of Hangu Pass in Lingbao, Henan. Therefore, the large clans from Guandong moved westward to enrich Guanzhong, and later formed the famous Jiang surnamed clan in Tianshui. During the Three Kingdoms and Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Jiang surname had already spread in Qinchuan, Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but its population center was still in Shaanxi and Shandong. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, the surname Jiang entered the Fujian and Guangdong regions. In the Northeast during the Qing Dynasty, due to the immigration from Shandong, the comprehensive Sinicization of the Eight Banners of Manchuria, and the use of Han surnames, the Jiang surname developed rapidly in the Northeast and emerged as a new force. Eventually, three large Jiang surname gathering areas were formed: Sichuan in the west, Shandong in the east, and Northeast China.

During the Song Dynasty, there were about 100,000 people with the surname Jiang, accounting for about 0.13% of the country's population, ranking after the 110th. The distribution in the country is mainly concentrated in Shandong, Zhejiang, Henan, and Guangdong. These four provinces with Jiang surname account for about 80% of the total population of Jiang surname, followed by Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and other provinces. Shandong is the largest province with the Jiang surname, and is home to 43% of the total population with the Jiang surname. There are three major population gathering areas with the Jiang surname in Henan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangdong.

During the Ming Dynasty, there were approximately 260,000 people with the surname Jiang, accounting for approximately 0.27% of the country’s population. It was the 79th surname in the Ming Dynasty. In the 600 years of Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, the net population growth rate of the country was 20%, and the growth rate of the population surnamed Jiang far exceeded the growth rate of the national population. The distribution in the country is mainly concentrated in Zhejiang, Shandong, and Jiangsu. These three provinces account for about 58% of the total population of Jiang surname, followed by Shaanxi, Fujian, and Jiangxi. Another 19% of the Jiang surname is concentrated in these three provinces. The population with the Jiang surname in Zhejiang Province accounts for about 26% of the total population with the Jiang surname, making it the province with the largest number of Jiang surnames. The population flow of the Jiang surname across the country moved from north to southeast, and the center of the Jiang surname drifted from north to southeast. Two large gathering centers of the Jiang surname were formed in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong.

The distribution and map of the contemporary Jiang surname:

The contemporary population with the surname Jiang has reached more than 4.6 million, making it the 50th surname in the country, accounting for approximately 0.37% of the national population. In the 600 years since the Ming Dynasty, the population of Jiang surname has increased from more than 250,000 to more than 4.6 million, an increase of more than 18 times. The growth rate of the population of Jiang surname is much higher than the growth rate of the national population. In the 1000 years since the Song Dynasty, the population of Jiang surname has been on a straight line. The distribution across the country is currently mainly concentrated in Shandong, Henan, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, and Jilin. These six provinces account for approximately 57% of the total population surnamed Jiang.

Secondly, they are distributed in Jiangsu, Anhui, Hunan, Hebei, and Zhejiang. The Jiang surname is concentrated in these five provinces by 22%. Shandong is the province with the largest number of people with the surname Jiang, accounting for about 11% of the total population with the surname Jiang. There are two Jiang surname gathering areas in the country: Luyu in the east and the three northeastern provinces. During the 600 years, the degree and direction of population flow with the Jiang surname were very different from those during the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. The migration back from the southeast to central, northern, and western China was very strong, and the migration to the northeast became an important direction.

The schematic diagram of the distribution frequency of the surname Jiang among the population (see Figure 50) shows that in the three northeastern provinces, eastern Inner Mongolia, and eastern Shandong, the surname Jiang generally accounts for more than 0.88% of the local population, and can reach 2.4% in the central area. More than %, the above areas cover 13.7% of the total land area, and are home to about 43% of the people surnamed Jiang. In most of Shandong, eastern Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin, most of Henan and Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, northern Hunan, Jiangxi and Fujian, northern Guangxi, Guizhou, western Sichuan, southeast Chongqing, southwest Gansu, and southeast Qinghai, the distribution of the Jiang surname among the local people The proportion ranges from 0.29% to 0.58%. Its coverage area accounts for 18.9% of the total land area and is home to about 35% of the people surnamed Jiang.

The traditional culture of the surname Jiang:

The county title and hall number. The county title of the surname Jiang is mainly Tianshui. Important court names with the surname Jiang include Jiayi and Weibin. The title of "Jiayi" is derived from Shennong. Legend has it that Shennong taught people to grow crops, which were called Jiahu in ancient times. Shennong took Jiang as his surname to commemorate Shennong's merits, so he took this as his hall name. "Weibin" is named after Jiang Ziya. At the end of the Shang Dynasty, Jiang Ziya lived in seclusion on the edge of the Wei River with great ambitions, fishing with hooks, and waiting for his British master. King Wen of Zhou visited the virtuous people and met Jiang Ziya on the bank of the Wei River, and asked him to serve as prime minister. Jiang Ziya helped Zhou destroy the Shang Dynasty and created the Zhou family's 800-year-old foundation. For this reason, later generations named Weibin.

Couplets There are five important couplets with the surname Jiang as follows:

Xiao Zheng leaps over the carp; Ji Min shepherds the sheep.

Pingjiang Guarantee; Baishi Qingge.

Going out of the suburbs to worship, the emperor's concubine performs military duties; waiting for sins in the alley, the Zhou Dynasty calls him a virtuous person.

The lonely and loyal Tianzhi, the outstanding achievements of Fulong; the great filial piety god, the fantastic spirit of Yueli.

According to the order of heaven, music has always been played in quilts in the past; the water source is in the Wei River, and now the fragrance of bamboo forests is sent far away.

Family motto Jiang Chenying was born in Cixi, Zhejiang Province in the Qing Dynasty. He was good at poetry and writing, and was good at calligraphy, especially cursive calligraphy. At the age of 70, he was admitted to Jinshi and was awarded the title of editor and Sunchon examiner. He used his own experience and perseverance to require his children to learn and study persistently, and they must continue to learn when they grow old. His article "Discussing Reading with My Nephew" is the most representative. He emphasized: "There is no need to do too many things when studying, but if you set a strict course and don't stop working, then you will be rich over time and you will not forget it."

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