Hi Yiluming,
If you are searching the origin of the ancestral clan Yi, I could just provide on Yi (易) from CHUNG Yoon-Ngan’s book “The Origin of Chinese Surnames” as I had done for Medlyfe in “Genealogy of An (安) Family Name?” at
siyigenealogy.proboards.com/thread/2262/genealogy-family-nameI would think you may be interested to trace your pedigree lineage from Anxi to as far back as your ancestral records there could provide. From the surname reference book entitled “安溪姓氏志” it would appear that your surname Yi has only one Yi clan. If that is so it would be relatively easier for your case. For comparison, in Anxi there are 40 different Chen/Tan (陳) clans. For that case locating the ancestry for someone with that surname would be more involved. It would require the knowledge of the ancestral place in Anxi ones ancestor originated from. If you are interest to trace your pedigree lineage from Anxi and its history, you would need first to find the name(s) of your immediate ancestor(s) in Chinese. Get this for a start and members from this Forum could then guide you on. Many people from Anxi settled in Malaysia. Where your immediate ancestor did first settled in outside of China?
As to the other question regarding the various forms of name, I shall try to answer to the best of my capability which is rather limited.
In her Zhu/Chee (朱) clan zupu that Chee Yit Lin translated into English as book entitled “The Chee Clan”, she said that “traditionally in olden times, when a son marries, he is given a second name” which is the zi (字) name while “when a man reaches 60 years of age, he is considered an elder and on his 60th birthday adopts another name” which is the hao (號).
In the webpage
weber.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/hbnames-u.html on “Chinese Personal Names” various forms of names are quoted. I quote: “zì 字 = "style," "epithet," or "marriage name," taken at marriage or coming of age (formerly marked by a "capping" ceremony)” while “hào 號 or wàihào 外號 = "sobriquet," usually assumed by the person later in life, although sometimes conferred by friends. One can think of it as a rather formal nickname.”
A couple of years ago I had an exchange of emails with another Forum member on what constituted the zi (字) name and the hao (號) name. He seemed to hold the conviction that hao (號) is a name given when a man got married. From what I have seen so far and read, I am not able to support that. I have quite a lengthy article entitled “中國古代的姓、氏、名、字、號” but it is Chinese which I am not able to read and understand. If anyone can translate it for the benefit of other Forum members I could post that complete article.
Among others, I have two surname reference books entitle “安溪姓氏志” and “永春县姓氏志” for Anxi and Yongchun respectively. They provide references on the number of people residing in various townships (and villages therein) with the same surname. In addition for each surname clan the following information as well:
1. The various clans for each of the surname,
2. The years when updates of ancestral records carried out by each clan within each surname,
3. The generation names of each clan within each surname,
4. Other information relating to each clan within each surname.
From the reference books, my observations are:
1. Some clans have one set of generation names for which I think would apply when giving the zi (字) name to a person, and
2. Many clans have two sets of generation names; the first set applies either to hui (諱) or ming (名) while another set applies to zi (字).
From various zupus/jiapus from these two counties I had examined before, it would appear to me that hui (諱) or ming (名) general applies the initial name given to a person. There are occasion that I had also come across some people given a milk name or ruming (乳名) as well and recorded therein.
In my particular Chen/Tan (陳) clan, there is one set of general generation names applying to zi (字). Many branches of my clan use that set of generation names. However, there are also some branches that use their own set of generation names as well. In one branch that I just recently came across, whilst they use the generation names for the zi (字), they subsequently adopted another set of generation names for apply to the hui (諱) as well.
Philip Tan
