Is Cai a noble person in ancient times?

In ancient times, the surname Cai was a noble person.

The surname Cai is a descendant of Jichang, the Marquis of Xibo, and takes the country as his surname. After King Wu destroyed the Shang Dynasty, he granted his fifth brother Shudu the title of Cai Shudu. During the reign of King Cheng of Zhou Dynasty, the title of Cai Zhong, son of Cai Shudu, was changed to Cai. The new Cai Kingdom was located in Shangcai County, Henan Province. After Chu conquered Cai, Chinese people took Guo as their surname and scattered throughout the country. It originated from the territory with the surname Ji, a descendant of Emperor Xuanyuan, and belonged to the surname based on the name of the feudal town.

The surname Shu is a direct descendant of Emperor Xuanyuan. During the Yao, Shun, and Yuxia periods, the Yan, Kan, Yin, Cai, and Lu clans to which the surname belonged were spread throughout the Weihe River Basin, westward along the river to eastern Henan and the western Henan area. The tribe with the surname Cai is responsible for worshiping in the tribe and has high influence. The two words Cai and Ji were common in ancient times, so Cai originated from Ji.

The migration and spread of the surname Cai

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the Cai family’s footprints had spread all over Henan, Hebei, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hubei, Anhui, Shandong, Hunan, and Guizhou. During the Warring States Period, people of the Cai surname traveled south from Caidian, Hubei Province, entered Changde, Hunan Province, and entered Guizhou along the Yuanjiang River. They mixed with the local indigenous people and became the ancestors of the current Miao, Tujia, Yao, Buyi and other ethnic groups with the Cai surname.

During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Cai surname was mainly distributed in the Central Plains, and the Jiyang Cai surname was formed in eastern Henan and western Shandong. This was the most glorious period in the history of the Cai surname, with numerous celebrities and far-reaching influence. At the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, war broke out in the north, and a large number of people from the Central Plains moved south. People surnamed Cai began to enter Jiangsu and Zhejiang on a large scale. During the Tang Dynasty, there were two large-scale immigrants from the Central Plains to Fujian, and the Cai surname was one of the main surnames. This laid the foundation for the Cai surname to become a popular surname in the south.