Why are the first four surnames of the Hundred Family Surnames "Zhao Qian Sun Li"?

Zhao Qian Sun Li, Zhou Wu King Zheng. Feng Chen, Chu Wei, Jiang Chen, Han Yang. It is very familiar to everyone. I think every netizen who can read this article will think that this is the most familiar children's rhyme about surnames. "Hundred Family Surnames" is one of the three major reading books of traditional enlightenment. Although we all cannot memorize the complete The whole book, but the first eight words last throughout our lives.

"Hundred Family Surnames" is originally a book about Chinese surnames, written in the early Northern Song Dynasty. Originally, 411 surnames were collected, which was later increased to 504. Among them, 444 are single surnames and 60 are compound surnames.

The order of "Hundred Family Surnames" is not based on the actual ranking of the population of each surname. Just because it is easy to read, easy to learn and remember, and "Hundred Family Surnames", "Three Character Classic" and "Thousand Character Classic" are collectively called Three Hundred Thousand, it has been an enlightenment book for children in China from ancient times to the present. Therefore, it is not difficult to see that the status of "Hundred Family Surnames" is very important.

Let’s first talk about why I start with Zhao. The surname Zhao is the surname of the emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty. Although "Hundred Family Surnames" was not compiled by the Song Dynasty, as a minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, the surname Zhao was naturally given the first place; let's talk about Qian, the surname Qian was the national surname of Wu Yue, although Qian was not placed first. But putting Qian in the second place in "Hundred Family Surnames" is to highlight the importance of the Qian surname.

Let’s talk about Sun. Sun is the surname of the principal concubine of the king of Wuyue Kingdom. The Sun family is also a relative of the emperor of Wuyue Kingdom, and the Sun family plays a decisive role in Wuyue Kingdom. Naturally, the surname Sun is also listed. The last surname, Li, is the national surname of the Southern Tang Dynasty, a friendly neighbor of the Wuyue Kingdom. Because the Southern Tang launched a war to destroy Fujian, the remnants of the Fujian Kingdom defected to Wu Yue. Wu Yue took the opportunity to discuss with the Southern Tang and carve up the territory of the Fujian Kingdom. This kind of good thing was taken advantage of by Wu Yue, and the surname Li was naturally ranked fourth in "One Hundred Surnames".

So after reading the above statement, the hundreds of surnames starting with Zhao, Qian, Sun and Li are not ranked by large population. Our popular Song version of "Hundred Family Surnames" is ranked one by one based on this logic.