How I tracked down my 800-year family history
遵乃成训，其世永昌。
The phrase means “Follow the lessons as you have inherited them, and your offspring will thrive forever.” It was the most important clue that helped me track down my family records after years of intermittent searching.
This is the cover of my family’s record, which totals 883 pages over 4 volumes. It was last updated in 1911, right before the end of China’s last dynasty — Qing. To my knowledge there are only a handful of physical copies in the world, locked away in historic archives in Beijing, Tokyo, and wait for it, Salt Lake City of Utah, USA. If you’re wondering how did Utah end up with a copy of my family records, you’ll have to learn about the genealogical practices and beliefs of the Mormons, but that’s not the focus of my story.
To understand how the phrase helped me to track down my family records, I’ll have to give a crash course on the Chinese practice of 字辈 (Zibei, meaning generation name).
Say you’re a dude from New York called John Rockefeller and you have a son named John Rockefeller Jr, and he has a son named John Rockefeller III, who has a son named John Rockefeller IV, etc. And so, little Rockefeller IV can tell that he is the fourth generation in a long line of Rockefellers.
In some Chinese families, this is done through a poem instead of numbers. So, say that John Rockefeller was Chinese and he decided on a poem that goes “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,” then his son could be Chris “Rudolph” Rockefeller, and his grandson would be Philip “the” Rockefeller, and his great-grandson Charles “Red” Rockefeller, and so on. The middle name would carry the cipher for how many generations it has been since the first guy. It can also be applied across the entire generation, so Charles “Red” Rockefeller and all his cousins would share the same middle name (instead of only giving the title of “Junior” or “III” to the firstborn of the firstborn).
The practice for a family to have a Zibei first became a thing around the 7th century, but had since fallen out of style in modern China. Neither my dad nor I have retained the poem in our names. However, my father still knows what that character would have been for him and for me, shown in red and green in the poem.
遵乃成训，其世永昌。
Since this poem, as far as I know, only goes as far back as my great-great-great-grandfather, I had to comb through dozens of different family records to find the one that contains the one branch carrying the word from the poem,
I had to sieve through dozens of different family records because there are many different clans of the family name 姚 (Yao), and each of them began documenting their own branch at different times, usually as a person had moved and settled in a new village, or as a person or one of his offspring had learned how to write.
These family record books are called 族谱 (Zupu, meaning genealogical index).
For better and worse, these Zupus usually go much further back than five generations. This is good because I’d get to trace back my family much further back. It is bad because I’d have to comb through the dozens of different Zupus to find the one that contains the poem consistent with my family’s. Since the poem is not unified across the entire clan, this was like trying to locate a particular bundle of branches near the top of a particular tree in an orchard. And after clicking through hundreds of slow-loading microfilm images (not PDFs), and many red herrings, I finally found the godforsaken page.
To make things more difficult for me, apparently, by the time my family poem rolled into the third generation, there was a confusion between the homophones 承 and 成, and my father had been remembering my great-grandfather’s name by the other character, but it could also be the record book that got it wrong. I think I might have missed this page the first time I saw it because of this confusion.
After I have located my branch, the first thing I did was, of course, tell my father. The second I did was to go back and search for the page containing information about each member of the family. Yes. There is a blurb written for every single name that appears in the book. Here is the one for the founding father. Also, the family records only track the paternal side, with women only recorded as daughters or wives.
This is a brief description of the first generation in the book. The text reads: First Generation // 晋 (Jin) // With the last name of 姚 (Yao), the common name 晋 (Jin), the formal name 燕九 (Yanjiu) // Passed his order through his son 璜 (Huang) // Worked during the Yuan Dynasty as a manager for a local official // Born in the 江西 (Jiangxi) province, later moved to 镇江 (the city of Zhenjiang) 丹徒镇 (the town of Dantu) 之寺巷 (the alley of Zhisi) // Is the first generation for the Dantu branch // Information on generations before him, as well as his own birth and death dates are unavailable, as the old family records had been destroyed during the reign of 嘉靖 (Emperor Jiajing) over the Ming Dynasty // Married 邬 (maiden name Wu) as his first wife, birth and death dates unknown // Buried together in this town, left of 惠音寺 (Huiyin Temple), 长图山 (Mount Changtu) 殷字号 (Banner Yin), on a plot with the area 三亩二分 (about half an acre) // (Additional technical information about the fengshui of the burial plot) // Had one son named 璜 (Huang)
And here is the entry for my great grandfather, and the closest family member I have that had an entry in the book. The text reads: The fourth son of 乃铨 and also the fourth child // Graduated from 两江优级师范 (Present day National Central University in Nanjing) 公共科 (Social studies) // Born in 光緒十六年庚寅三月三十日寅時生 (The 16th year of Emperor Guangxu’s reign on the 30th of the third month at the hour of Yin, or in modern format, on May 18th, 1890, between 3–5 am) // Married 陈氏 (Maiden name of Chen) from 泰州 (Taizhou) who was born on 光緒二十年甲午正月二十一日酉時 (Feb 26th, 1894 between 5–7 pm)
If we skip all the way to the beginning of the last name 姚 itself, it can be traced back to 帝舜 (Dishun, meaning Emperor Shun), who supposedly lived around the 22nd century BCE, shown here in a lithograph from the 2nd century AD, which is closer in time to the current day than to Shun himself. Kind of crazy to think about.
Supposedly, Emperor Shun, or 姚重华 (Yao Chunghua), changed his family name from 姬 (Ji) to 姚 (Yao) because he was born in 姚墟 (Yao Xu, meaning the marketplace of Yao). It is not clear to me, however, where did the marketplace get its name from.
There are some sources saying that it may have originally been called 洮墟, which would mean the marketplace of rinsing and cleaning, or 桃墟, the marketplace of peaches, and the female radical 女 was introduced to either 洮 or 桃 to become 姚 to signify those who were born there.
To understand how the characters could have morphed and adopted into different names would require a deeper dive into the Chinese language and surname practices. If you are interested, you can begin by learning about the difference between 姓 (Xing) and 氏 (Shi).
In short, my last name originated at a time before paternal family names became the default way surnames propagate in China. Back in 22nd century BCE China, people would have names analogous to John Rockefeller (surname of the father), or John Davison (surname of the mother), or John Oil-Man (his occupation), or John New-York (his birthplace), or any combination of these surnames.
A few words about Emperor Shun. According to legends, he was the last emperor of China before dynastic rule began, by his successor 禹 (Yu), who is arguably a much more important figure in Chinese history, legendary or not. Yu was the man who tamed the Great Flood of China, from around the same time period as the Biblical Noah, and shares a similar level of cultural significance among the Chinese as Noah does for the Jews, or any protagonist from other cultures with similar myths about a great flood.
Tracing further back from Emperor Shun, legends have it that he was the 9th generation offspring of 黄帝 (Huangdi, meaning Yellow Emperor), the mytho-historical first emperor and originator of China as a centralized state, and also the ancestor of all Chinese people, in other words, the Chinese equivalent to Adam of the Bible.
So, if you have been following, there still exists a 3000-year gap between the first guy on my family record and this Emperor Shun guy. I am still intermittently searching for clues to fill in this gap, which may or may not be possible. There are also some quite interesting details here and there from my family record, which I may make a future post about, but this is it for now.
Finally, since there are still two characters left on the phrase after mine — 永 (meaning forever) and 昌 (meaning to thrive) — so, maybe I’ll reinstate the practice, or at least keep the story alive.
