Reflections | How the Wongs got their Chinese family name
One of the most common Chinese family names, Huang, or Wong, can be traced back to an ancient state, whose citizens decided to take its name as their own
On a recent trip overseas I had to fill in an immigration form, which required me to write my family and given names. My Singaporean passport doesn’t make that distinction. Not everyone in Singapore has a family name – many Malay and Indian Singaporeans follow a patronymic convention, which means they don’t have a fixed surname that is passed down through the generations. Chinese Singaporeans, however, have surnames, which they place in front of their given names.
In ancient China, a person had two family names: xing, which indicated the bloodline, and shi, which placed him, or her, in a sub-group within that bloodline. The difference between the two blurred over the centuries and by the Qin dynasty (221–206BC), they were merged into one by imperial decree.
The tiny state, located in present-day Henan, survived the Shang dynasty’s demise in 1046BC and swore allegiance to the subsequent Zhou dynasty, which conferred its ruler a middling title. After Huang’s annexation by the neighbouring state of Chu in 648BC, its citizens took the name of their vanquished state as their family name, and went forth and multiplied. Today, Huang (and its dialect variants) is one of the most common Chinese surnames in the world.
