Some Thoughts on Surnames and Family Names

 

I recently had dinner with Abu Bakar Sulaiman, whom I first met about four years ago at a friend’s dinner, where I had been invited to speak about a book I had just self-published. That evening, he kindly handed me copies of the three books he himself had written. I found them strikingly progressive, particularly in their cultural and religious arguments.

We have since become great friends!

Bakar is several years my senior. He was once a senior figure in the now-defunct Bank Bumiputra. One of my brothers-in-law had worked there as an engineer; his own brother, who also worked at the bank, Bakar told me, had been Bakar’s immediate superior.

In his books, Bakar identified himself as “AB Sulaiman”, which initially struck me as odd, since Sulaiman was clearly his father’s given name rather than a family name. I later realised—after reading his works more carefully—that this was deliberate. He was advocating the adoption of a family name or surname culture among Malays, with the father’s given name serving as the family’s surname going forward. This mirrors what several distinguished Muslim families have already done: Merican, Albar, Alatas, Jamalullail, Barakbah, and others.

During dinner, he lamented that few Malays know much about their family history. Typically, one can trace lineage only as far as one’s paternal or maternal grandparents, rarely beyond. By contrast, he noted, many Chinese can trace their ancestry back hundreds of years.

We both share a love of history, and we agreed that family names or surnames form an indispensable foundation for historical consciousness.

Indeed, I mentioned to him that there are still living descendants of Confucius today. The currently recognised head of the Confucian lineage is Kung Tsui-Chang (孔垂長), the 79th-generation direct descendant of the great sage.

Even a far less mortal like myself knows that my Lim lineage originated in Henan during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) and, through centuries of civil war and upheaval, migrated south before eventually settling in Fujian.

Because of this continuity, most ethnic Chinese possess a strong sense of history. We are familiar with the virtues and flaws of our historical figures, their great achievements and disastrous failures, and – perhaps most vividly – the humiliations China suffered at the hands of the West and Japan after 1840. Along clan or surname lines, we also know the notable figures among our own ancestral forebears. The culture fosters collective memory – both pride and prejudice.

Surnames and Family Names
“Surnames” and “family names” are usually used interchangeably. Strictly speaking, however, they are not quite the same. Family names are more “clannish”: they imply relational ties, even across many generations. People who share the same surname, by contrast, may not be related at all.

When Did China Adopt Surnames?
China adopted hereditary surnames well over 3,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence – oracle bones and bronze inscriptions – already shows stable surnames during the Shang–Zhou period (c. 1600–256 BCE). These names were hereditary and deeply embedded in social structure.

Europe, by contrast, only began using fixed surnames in the late Middle Ages, roughly 800 to 1,500 years ago, depending on the region.

Early Chinese naming consisted of two forms: 姓 (xing) and 氏 (shi). Xing were originally matrilineal, tied to ancestral clans, and largely restricted to the aristocracy. Many contain the 女 (“woman”) radical, such as 姜 and 姬. Shi were branch names derived from fiefs, offices, or places, and were more flexible, often changing over time.

Eventually, xing and shi merged into a single hereditary surname system that still exists today.

Universal adoption began during the Qin–Han era (221 BCE–220 CE), when bureaucratic governance, taxation, and household registration required fixed surnames. By the Han dynasty, virtually all Chinese families possessed hereditary surnames.

The European Experience
European adoption of surnames – and with them, continuity of family identity – came much later and far less uniformly. Ancient Romans used multiple names - praenomen (personal name), nomen (clan name), and cognomen (branch or family nickname) – as in Gaius Julius Caesar. However, these were not fixed surnames in the modern sense. Naming conventions collapsed after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century.

In the early Middle Ages (c. 500–1000), most Europeans had only a single given name; small communities made surnames unnecessary. From the High to Late Middle Ages (c. 1000–1500), family names gradually emerged, driven by urbanisation, taxation, and legal record-keeping. Common sources included:

• Patronymic: Johnson (“son of John”), Ivanov
• Occupation: Smith, Miller
• Location: Hill, Atwood, York
• Nickname or trait: Short, Brown

Regional timelines varied:

• Italy and southern France: c. 1000–1200
• England: mostly fixed by c. 1300–1400
• Germany and Scandinavia: later and inconsistent
• Iceland: still uses patronymics today

In much of Europe, hereditary identities are only 600–900 years old. Outside immediate families, most bearers of these surnames are not related at all. Exceptions exist among the nobility and aristocracy, where family names are more distinctive and exclusive.

This difference is not merely one of naming practice; it reflects a fundamental civilisational divergence.

Korea, Vietnam, and Japan
All three societies adopted surnames under strong Chinese influence, though timing and social reach differed.

Korea followed Confucian bureaucracy and Chinese-style census systems.

• Three Kingdoms period (1st–7th centuries): surnames among elites
• Goryeo dynasty (918–1392): broader adoption
• Joseon dynasty (1392–1897): near-universal use

Many commoners acquired surnames very late, sometimes as recently as the 18th–19th centuries, often adopting elite clan names. This explains why a small pool of surnames—Kim, Lee (Yi), Park—dominates the population.

Vietnam began adopting surnames under Chinese rule (111 BCE–939 CE). The practice spread through administration and Confucian education, becoming universal by the Lý–Trần period (11th–14th centuries). Today, Nguyễn accounts for roughly 38–40% of the population, largely due to dynastic prestige.

Japan developed aristocratic clan names (uji) by the Kofun period (3rd–6th centuries), heavily influenced by Chinese models. Commoners, however, were historically forbidden to use surnames; only samurai families did so consistently. Universal adoption occurred abruptly during the Meiji Restoration, when surnames were made compulsory in 1875. Japanese surnames are thus largely a top-down modern imposition rather than the product of gradual medieval evolution.

Why Are Chinese Surnames So Few?
Despite its vast population, China has remarkably few surnames: about 100 cover roughly 85% of the population. Europe, by contrast, has hundreds of thousands.
China fixed surnames early, before massive population growth, large-scale migration, and linguistic fragmentation. Surnames therefore replicated rather than diversified. Europe experienced the opposite: surnames formed late, locally, and independently.

Early Chinese states also assigned surnames, enforced standard forms, and discouraged unofficial variants. Europe had no comparable central authority.

Chinese society further emphasised:

• Lineage continuity
• Ancestral halls
• Genealogies (zupu)

Creating new surnames was discouraged; joining an existing lineage was socially preferable.

The Chinese writing system reinforced this stability. Characters preserve surname identity across dialects, preventing phonetic drift. While Schmidt, Smyth, and Smit diverge, 王 remains 王 regardless of pronunciation.

Even today, surname-based clan temples and shrines can be found not only in China and Taiwan, but also wherever large Chinese communities exist. The Khoo kongsi in Penang, for example, is a gathering place where members of the 邱 clan (Qiū in pinyin) from across the region congregate to ritually honour their ancestry.

Recently, a former schoolmate of mine, Lau Thiam Soon, travelled to Yongchun in Fujian to attend a similar gathering. There, he was pleasantly surprised to encounter a senior from our school: former Court of Appeal Justice Datuk Wira Low Hop Bing. Lau and Low share the same surname when written in Chinese: 刘. They are, in fact, related, sharing common ancestry in a village in China. How remarkable!

For Thiam Soon and Datuk Wira Low, 刘 is more than a surname; it is their family name, albeit separated by many generations.

Avoidance of Close-Kin Marriage
In China and Korea, surnames served not merely as identity markers but also as tools for regulating marriage.

From at least the Zhou dynasty, China observed the principle 同姓不婚 (“people of the same surname must not marry”). This rule predates Confucianism and was enforced socially—and at times legally. It applied even when genealogical links were unknown or distant. The logic was preventive rather than precise: shared surname itself implied shared ancestry.

In a pre-modern, population-level risk-management sense, the rule was directionally correct. Early societies lacked genetic knowledge and reliable multi-generation records, yet faced high infant mortality. They therefore relied on simple, scalable heuristics.

By the Han dynasty, the rule softened: same-surname marriage became permissible if lineage origins were clearly different. Nonetheless, the taboo persisted, especially among elites, and remains culturally sensitive in many regions today.

Korea enforced an even stricter rule. Under Goryeo and Joseon, individuals sharing both surname and ancestral origin (bon-gwan) were forbidden to marry. In practice, this prohibition often extended across separations of thousands of years. Remarkably, the rule remained law until 1997.

European surnames, by contrast, were never designed to regulate exogamy. Church law governed marriage based on degrees of consanguinity, not names. Two people named “Smith” could marry freely, while cousins with different surnames could not.

In China and Korea, surname systems thus served three interlinked functions: incest prevention, lineage organisation, and state administration.

Were These Rules Medically Sound?
Modern genetics shows that risk arises from close consanguinity. Everyone carries harmful recessive mutations; close relatives are more likely to share them. Repeated consanguinity concentrates these risks.

Approximate population averages are as follows:

• Unrelated parents: 2–3% risk of serious congenital disorder
• First cousins: 4–6%
• Uncle–niece: 8–12%
• Siblings or parent–child: 20–40% or higher

Repeated cousin marriage across generations dramatically increases risk, as seen in isolated villages, royal houses, and highly endogamous communities. European aristocracies famously suffered such outcomes, including conditions like the Habsburg jaw and haemophilia. Maybe this is the concern Bakar is harbouring.

By late imperial and modern times, population mobility diluted the biological meaning of surnames, rendering 同姓不婚 medically obsolete. Yet as an early empirical rule, it worked.

The bottom line is this: close-kin marriage does not doom individual children, but statistically it concentrates genetic disease. Pre-modern societies recognised the pattern even without understanding the science. Their rules were not superstition, but pragmatic risk control—an early form of population genetics, achieved without genetics.

End

Credit: Much of the above was taken from ChatGPT