Zhao an, Fujian Shen Family

[chenmingkui]

Hello, I am long time viewer but first time creating my own post.


I recently got hold of this picture of my grandpa's funerary board. I believe my family created this board generations ago and much knowledge has been lost with them. I am wondering if anyone recognizes the center line and if that information is has any relevance to finding out more about my ancestry. All I know is that my grandpa's family came from Zhao An, Fujian.


Thank you so much for your time and efforts towards helping us connect with our roots. 

  

[tyuti1668]

沈 is a major surname in Zhao An. Pls reseaech the connections deeper 1st

Link 沈姓是诏安的第一大姓，诏安素有“沈半县”之称

[Henry]

chenmingkui

I did an OCR processing of the image & got the Chinese characters & did an ChatGPT translation to English:

顯祖佰沈維鳳，胞弟沈世啓法名心通顯祖考沈其借，胞弟沈世珠
福 曾祖考沈玩公、胞弟沈世軒、侄子沈音福
高祖考沈元顺顯考沈維貞法名如利字解和奉爲吳興郡沈家先祖曆代尊靈列位
高祖妣沈潘氏，顯妣馮氏義法名如仁字解慈曾祖妣沈珠氏面、顯姑沈氏梅侄子沈善善
建 顯祖妣阮氏猶，弟媳胡氏為，法名是僧
顯祖姑沈氏娟、胞妹沈世明法名心輪



Ancestor Shen Weifeng, brother Shen Shiqi, Dharma name Xintong. Ancestor Shen Qijie, brother Shen Shizhu.

Great-grandfather Shen Wan, brother Shen Shixuan, nephew Shen Yinfeng.
Great-great-grandfather Shen Yuanshun, honored ancestor Shen Weizhen, Dharma name Ruli, courtesy name Jiehe. Worshipped as the respected ancestors of the Shen family of Wuxing County for generations.
Great-great-grandmother Mrs. Shen Pan, honored grandmother Mrs. Feng, Dharma name Ruren, courtesy name Jiecui. Great-grandmother Mrs. Shen Zhu, honored aunt Mrs. Shen Mei, nephew Shen Shanshan.

Built by honored grandmother Mrs. Ruan, sister-in-law Mrs. Hu, Dharma name Shiseng.
Honored aunt Mrs. Shen Juan, sister Shen Shiming, Dharma name Xinlun.

Now you have some of the Chinese names for the pedigree of the ancestors

Henry

[chenmingkui]

Thank you so much! Even with these family names, it still must be difficult to locate any ancestral villages right? I am also in the States so I am just wondering what future steps would look like.

[Henry]

chenmingkui,

If you can share a clear photo of the gravestone of your grandfather & it is inscribed with Chinese characters. This usually has the name of the ancestral village.

Henry

[LJ]

Hi Henry and chenmingkui,

While looking at the results of the OCR processing, I noticed some errors. Here is my adjustment, which also includes the alignments, symmetry, and font sizes of the funerary board's inscription, in order to glean more information, such as the subordination of relationships and the names of places, even though we have rotated the text counterclockwise by 90°:

	顯祖佰沈維鳳。     胞弟沈世啓法名心通
福	顯祖考沈其借。     胞弟沈世珠。
	曾祖考沈玩公。     胞弟沈世軒。侄子沈咅1福
	高祖考沈元順2。 顯考沈維貞法名如利字觧2和
	奉爲吳興郡沈家先祖曆代尊靈列位
	高祖妣沈潘氏。  顯妣馮氏義法名如仁字觧2慈
建	曾祖妣沈珠氏面。  顯姑沈氏梅      侄子沈咅1善
	顯祖妣阮氏猶。     弟媳胡氏鴻3鵉1。 法名是僧
	顯祖姑沈氏娟。     胞妹沈世明法名心輪

Notes:
1. Correction of OCR
2. Variant of OCR
3. Missing from OCR

And here is my transliteration and very incomplete translation, with proper names in upper case:

	Xianzubai SHEN WEIFENG.                           Baodi SHEN SHIQI faming XINTONG
FU	Xianzukao SHEN QIJIE.                                Baodi SHEN SHIZHU.
	Zengzukao SHEN WAN gong.                         Baodi SHEN SHIXUAN.         Zhizi SHEN POUFU
	Gaozukao SHEN YUANSHUN.                   Xiankao SHEN WEIZHEN faming RULI zi JIEHE
	Feng wei WUXING county SHEN family xianzu lidai zun ling lie wei
	Gaozubi SHEN PAN shi.                           Xianbi FENG shi YI faming RUREN zi JIECI
JIAN	Zengzubi SHEN ZHU shi MIAN.                       Xiangu SHEN shi MEI      Zhizi SHEN POUSHAN
	Xianzubi RUAN shi YOU.                               Dixi HU shi HONGLUAN.     Faming SHISENG
	Xianzugu SHEN shi JUAN.                             Baomei SHEN SHIMING faming XINLUN

Cheers!
LJ

[Henry]

LJ

Thanks for the adjustments.

OCR technology is not yet perfect, but, it still is quite useful. Tracing the names of ancestors thru the 8,000 + pages of the Taishan Lee 7 volume genealogies, which has undergone OCR processing on the My China Roots website, is so much easier than trying to thumb thru all those pages.

Henry

[chenmingkui]

Wow. Thank you once again to the community for helping me with this. I am forever grateful. I guess my journey ends here because all I know is that my grandpa was from Zhao An, no ancestral villages mentioned.

I wanted to ask what " 顯祖考 " meant in terms of male family lineage. It only gives great-great grandfather, great-grandfather, and father so I was wondering why there isn't a (father's father) mentioned in the table.

Currently I have recorded these fragments for a generational poem. In the case this forum can hold for another Shen who recognizes these in the future.

元 (from my deduction of " 高祖考 " being great-great-grandfather)
玩 (from my deduction of " 曾祖考 " being great-grandfather)
其 (unsure where this falls in the picture / from "顯祖考")
維 (confirmed father of my grandfather)
世 (grandfather's)
培 (mother's)
德 (my generation)


Thank you in advance for answering this one-in-a-lifetime question!

[LJ]

Hi Henry,

I totally agree with you. OCR has definitely made tracing the names of ancestors at My China Roots (and also at Ancestry.com and FamilySearch) easier.

Likewise, online translators like Bing, DeepL, and Google make translations easier, although I'm not always satisfied with their results. In the case of the funerary board, I wasn't satisfied with the translations for any of the familial titles, like 顯祖佰 / xianzubai and 胞弟 / baodi. The reason was that the results were not anything like mth great-grandfather or nth great-uncle. So I left them in pinyin.

Actually, leaving the familial titles in pinyin turned out to be helpful, as doing so revealed more patterns, such as the staggered, symmetrical, and also anti-symmetrical use of the titles: The staggering and symmetry are indicated by titles starting with the prefixes xianzu, zengzu, and gaozu, on each side of the central line, radiating, in that order, towards that central line.

And the anti-symmetry is indicated by the central line separating lines beginning with the names of male ancestors, from lines starting with the names of female ancestors.

Additionally, I just noticed that the arrangement of the text on the board looks like a stylized arrow shooting towards the heavens.

Cheers!
LJ

[LJ]

You're welcome, chenmingkui. I am glad to help. I don't think, though, that your journey ends here. Although the funerary board does not mention ancestral villages, it does mention 吳興郡 / Wuxing Jun.

Please note: In my previous post, I translated 郡 / jun as "county," based on what I thought was the most appropriate of the English and Unihan definitions at MDBG.net, respectively,

"canton / county / region"

and

"administrative division."

However, I may have been incorrect. At Wiktionary.org, the most appropriate definition there is:

"1. (historical) An administrative subdivision of imperial China of various status over the centuries, usually translated as commandery or prefecture."

Because of these ambiguities in the character's definition, I will just translate 郡 as jun, which is really just the transliteration of the character, rather than a real translation.

In any case, so far, at Baidu Map (https://map.baidu.com/), Google Maps (https://maps.google.com/), OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/), and Tianditu (https://map.tianditu.gov.cn/), I haven't been able to find any administrative division named Wuxing in Zhao'an, Fujian.

Another indication that your journey to find your Shen ancestry hasn't ended is that tyuti1668 provided you a link to an article that mentions the Shens of Zhao'an, "福建诏安超有格调的高颜值古街，明清建筑颇多，堪称古建艺术天堂" (translation according to DeepL: "Fujian Zhaoan super stylish high value ancient streets, Ming and Qing Dynasty buildings are quite a lot, can be called a paradise of ancient building arts") (https//k.sina.cn/article_7507104866_1bf755462001014ob7.html). This article mentions several Shen organizations in Zhao'an (translations provided by DeepL):

沈氏承志堂 (Shen's Chengzhi Hall),
沈氏世恩堂 (Shen's Shi En Hall),
沈氏家庙宪伯第 (Shen Family Temple),
沈公书院 (Shen Gong Academy),
沈氏继述堂 (Shen's Jishu Hall),
沈氏宗祠 (Shen Ancestral Hall).

Perhaps, if you contact them, someone in these organizations will point you to Wuxing in Zhao'an, provide you the genealogy of the Shen of Wuxing, or connect you with the Shens of Wuxing.

Regarding what 顯祖考 / xianzukao means, I unfortunately don't know. According to MDBG.net though, 顯祖 / xianzu means "ancestors (old)," and 考 / kao may mean "deceased father." So, I'm guessing that 顯祖考 / xianzukao means "ancestral deceased father," but I don't know how to correlate it to any of the English-language familial titles for ancestors. Likewise, I have the same conundrum for the other titles mentioned on the funerary board, such as 顯祖佰 / xianzubai and 胞弟 / baodi.

So, I don't know why a father's father (a grandfather) isn't mentioned in the funerary table.

Thanks for recording your deduced fragment of your Shen generational poem for this forum to hold in case another Shen recognizes the poem's characters in the future. So, for your ancestors with confirmed generational characters,

顯祖佰 沈維鳳 / Xianzubai SHEN WEIFENG and
顯考 沈維貞 / Xiankao SHEN WEIZHEN

were members of your great-grandfather's generation, and

胞弟 沈世啓 / Baodi SHEN SHIQI,
胞弟 沈世珠 / Baodi SHEN SHIZHU,
胞弟 沈世軒 / Baodi SHEN SHIXUAN, and
胞妹 沈世明 / Baomei SHEN SHIMING

were from your grandfather's generation. This, in turn, means that 顯祖佰 沈維鳳 / Xianzubai SHEN WEIFENG and 胞弟 沈世啓 / Baodi SHEN SHIQI were father and son.

Since you were wondering why a father's father (a grandfather) isn't mentioned in the table, then I gather that none of the members of the 世 / SHI generation mentioned on the table is your grandfather?

In any case, if 顯祖佰 沈維鳳 / Xianzubai SHEN WEIFENG and 胞弟 沈世啓 / Baodi SHEN SHIQI were indeed father and son, then I wonder about other relationships between the ancestors mentioned on the board. For instance:

- Were 顯祖考 沈其借 / Xianzukao SHEN QIJIE and 胞弟 沈世珠 / Baodi SHEN SHIZHU father and son?
- Were 曾祖考 沈玩公 / Zengzukao SHEN WAN gong and 胞弟 沈世軒 / Baodi SHEN SHIXUAN father and son?
- Were 顯祖姑 沈氏娟 / Xianzugu SHEN shi JUAN and 胞妹 沈世明 / Baomei SHEN SHIMING mother and daughter?
- Were 顯祖考 沈其借 / Xianzukao SHEN QIJIE, 曾祖考 沈玩公 / Zengzukao SHEN WAN, and 顯祖姑 沈氏娟 / Xianzugu SHEN shi JUAN all members of the 沈 / WEI generation?
- Were 高祖考 沈元順 / Gaozukao SHEN YUANSHUN and 顯考 沈維貞 / Xiankao SHEN WEIZHEN father and son?
- Were 高祖考 沈元順 / Gaozukao SHEN YUANSHUN and 高祖妣 沈潘氏 / Gaozubi SHEN PAN shi husband and wife?

Since you recorded your generational poem in this forum in case another Shen recognizes it in the future, have you searched through the forum for other posts about the Shens, especially about the Shens of Zhao'an? I did such a search and found a number of such posts by forum member laohuaqiao. He seems very knowledgeable about the Shens, including the Shens of Zhao'an. However, he was last online in 2014, so I'm not sure if he will respond to any mentions of him in the forum, or to any messages sent to him.

Cheers!
LJ