How did the surnames of China people come into being?

Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi, Volume 24 "Female Department": "The surname is born by people, and from the female, the life is also pronounced." Ban Gu's "White Tiger Tongde Theory", Volume 9, said: "Those who have surnames are born, and people are born because of the weather." "Zuo Zhuan, eight years in seclusion", "The Emperor Jiande was born with a surname". This all shows that the original meaning of "surname" is "life". Therefore, it is generally believed that the surname is originally a racial title that represents the relationship of consanguinity, descent and blood clan, and is referred to as the family number for short. As a clan number, it is not the title of an individual or a family, but the title of the whole clan and tribe. According to documents, our ancestors originally used surnames for the purpose of "other marriages", "Ming lineage" and "other races". It came into being in the period of clan commune in primitive society. How did the surname come from? It is speculated that the origin of surnames is related to the totem worship of ancestors. In the primitive age, all tribes and clans had their own totem worship objects, such as ears of wheat, bears and snakes, which used to be the totems of our ancestors, and this totem worship object became the symbol of our tribe. Later, it became the code name of all members of this tribe, that is, "surname". Because the number of ancient clan tribes is limited and countable after all, there are few surnames left in pure ancient times. According to the Spring and Autumn Annals, the "ancient surnames" sorted out by later generations are: Gui (now there is Guishui in Zhuolu, Hebei Province), Gui, Zi, Ji, Feng, Ying (Qin surname), Ji, Ren, Ji, Qian, Cao, Qi and Gui. Nearly half of these surnames have the word female beside them. Therefore, people speculate that the generation of surnames may be in matriarchal clan society. Mr. Zhang Taiyan and other scholars have sorted out dozens of ancient surnames (about 59, Zhang Taiyan got 52, and others got 7 from the bronze inscriptions) from the older documents such as Shuowen, Shan Hai Jing, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen, so that the original surnames are only more than 8. It is conceivable that this is only a part of the surnames that actually existed in ancient times, and the original surnames are definitely more than one. The others have been lost. But one thing is certain: at that time, there were never as many surnames as we are talking about today. We can list several representative figures about surnames from ancient times to the present. (1) After the Northern Song Dynasty, in the feudal society, Hundred Family Names (compiled by Anonymous in Qiantang, Northern Song Dynasty), which has long been used as a children's literacy book, earned 52 surnames (including 342 single surnames and 6 compound surnames). The beginning says: "Qiansun Zhao Li, Zhou Wu Zheng Wang, Feng Chen Chu Wei, Jiang Shen Han Yang ...") ② There are 1,745 ancient surnames in Zheng Qiao's Annals of Surnames in Song Dynasty. (3) The Ming Dynasty Hanlin Academy edited Wu Shen and others compiled "Thousands of Surnames in the Imperial Ming Dynasty" according to the household registration collected by the Ministry at that time, and received 1968 surnames. (The beginning says: "Zhu Feng is lucky in heaven, rich in ten thousand square, sacred in spirit, civil and military, Taoist and Taotang ...") ④ Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty personally examined and approved "A Hundred Surnames of Imperial Family", (The beginning says: "Confucius was absent from the Party, Meng Xi was in Qi Liang, the mountain was in Zhan Yang, Zou Lu Rongchang, Ran Ji Zong Zheng, and articles on a summer tour ...") ⑤ Zhang Shu, a Qing Dynasty. ⑥ After the founding of the People's Republic of China, mainland scholar Yan Fuqing and others once edited and published the Collection of Surnames in China, with 573 surnames. Among them, there are 3,47 single surnames, 2,85 double surnames, 163 three-character surnames and 12 four-character surnames. Taiwan Province Province has also published "Chinese Surnames" with 6,363 surnames, but there are cases of repeated income in variant characters. ⑦ According to the sampling survey conducted by the Chinese Characters Department of the China Language and Character Reform Committee in 1984 and the estimation of relevant experts, there are more than 3, surnames still in use today. According to the data of the 1982 national census, at present, there are about 4 commonly used surnames in China. According to the population at that time, the top 1 surnames are: Li Wangzhang, Liu Chen, Yang Zhao, Huang Zhouwu, Xu Sunhu, Zhu Gaolin, He Guo Maluo, Liang Songzheng, Xie Han, Tang Feng, Yu Dongxiao, Cheng Cao Yuan Deng Xu Fu Shen Zeng Peng Lu and Su Su. These 1 surnames account for more than 87% of the total population in China. Among them, Li Wang, Zhang Liu and Chen have a population of more than 3 million. Li 87 million, Wang 8 million, Zhang 8 million, Liu 6 million and Chen 5 million. The situation of the most popular surnames in cities across the country is also different. For example, the top 1 surnames in Shanghai are: Zhang Wang, Chen Li, Xu Zhu Zhou, Wu Liu Shen. ) This number is far from the so-called pure "surname" that we mentioned earlier.