Page 6 - Gan's Family History
P. 6
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Yan flames; blaze his glorious surname actually
had two sources of origin but
Yan wild goose T
Yan Swallow. they both are derived from the
same root. One was from the
If you had chosen YAN as in Face or legendary Fire God, ZHU RONG (Chu
Colour, then you are correct. Jung) whose descendants belonged
to the CHU JUNG clan.
According to the book “Chinese
Names” by Russell Jones, published Another branch of the Yan’s came
by Pelanduk Publication, the Yan from BO QIN (Po Chin), the eldest
Surname appears in the “Hundred son of ZHOU GONG (Chou Kung),
Family Surname” found in the better known as DUKE of CHOU in
Chinese Almanacs (T’ung Shu). the Zhou dynasty (1122 - 255BC). As
one of Bo Qin's descendents was
Chinese surnames are arranged conferred a piece of land at Yan city,
according to the number of strokes in he started a second branch of the
the characters. The Yan surname Yan clan.
has eighteen (18) strokes.
Fortunately, as both these branches
of the Yan had their original
expansion within the territory of
Shantung Province, the present Yan
clan can safely trace its roots from
there as an extension of the Chi clan.
Three thousand years ago, it was
said that one of the descendants
from HSIEN, names TI FU had the
character YAN(Yan) in his official title
as YAN KUNG which entitled him to
be called DUKE of YAN, so his
descendents decided to use it as a
surname. The area of its growth and
expansion was centred in CHU,
A page extracted from the Chinese alamac “Tung Shu”
of surnames located at the southeastern part of
4
Tsou Prefecture , Shantung
Province .
5
The Origin of the Yan Clan
4 A Prefecture is the next level of Administrative 5 A province (shěng or 省), formally provincial level
Division below the provincial level. Each Prefecture division, is the highest-level Chinese administrative
is made up of several counties. Prefectures can be division
rural or urban. We use them to divide the country
into manageable chunks as they form a complete set
with predefined boundaries.
