Baixing () or lao baixing () is a traditional Chinese term, meaning "the people" or "commoners." The word "lao" () is often added as a prefix before "baixing".
A confederation of tribes living along the Yellow River were the ancestors of what later became the Han ethnic group in China. Several large tribes, including the Huangdi tribes (), Yandi tribes (), and the Yi tribes, formed an alliance that consisted of roughly 100 tribes. This alliance is the origin of the Baixing, or the "hundred surnames."
Around 2,000 Han Chinese surnames are currently in use, but 19 of these surnames are used by about half of the Han Chinese people. About 87% of the population share 100 surnames.
Chinese family names
Chinese family names are patrilineal, meaning derived from father to children. After marriage, Chinese women typically retain their maiden name. Two distinct types of Chinese surnames existed in ancient China: Namely xing () or ancestral clan names, and shi () or branch lineage names. Later, the two terms began to be used interchangeably, and now xing refers to the surname, whereas shi may be used to refer to the clan name or maiden name. Historically, only Chinese men possessed xìng (), while Chinese women had shì () and took on their husband's xìng after marriage.
Literary compilation
Hundred Family Surnames (), commonly known as Bai Jia Xing, is a classic Chinese text that lists Chinese surnames. The book was composed in the early Song dynasty. The text originally contained 411 surnames and was expanded to 504 over time.
In the dynasties following the Song, the Three Character Classic, the Hundred Family Surnames, and Thousand Character Classic came to be known collectively as San Bai Qian (Three, Hundred, Thousand), from the first word in their titles. San Bai Qian was the universal introductory literary text for students, almost exclusively males from elite backgrounds.
Use of surnames to study Chinese ethnicity
Chinese surnames have been proposed to be used as an alternative method of identifying an individual ethnicity. Secondary data sources used by health research may not include information on race or ethnicity, and surnames are often used as a proxy when researching health care in ethnic populations.Shah, B., Chiu, M., Amin, S., Ramani, M., Sadry, S., & Tu, J. (2010) Surname lists to identify South Asian and Chinese ethnicity from secondary data in Ontario, Canada: a validation study. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 10(1), 42–42. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-10-42 . A study published by BioMed Central (BMC), an open-access publisher of reliable peer-reviewed journals,(BioMed Central. (n.d). About BMC. https://www.biomedcentral.com/about ) asserts that surname lists help to identify cohorts of ethnic minority patients, and it attempted to validate the lists to identify people of South Asian and Chinese origin. The study in Ontario, Canada, reviewed lists of South Asian and Chinese surnames and compared these to the Registered Persons Directory to assign specific ethnicities. The findings were validated against self-identified ethnicity through responses to the Canadian Community Health Survey. The conclusion was that surname lists can identify cohorts with South Asian and Chinese origins with a high degree of accuracy.
A similar study in the Canadian Journal of Public Health on the validity of using surname to define Chinese ethnicity found that using surnames in existing health records and surname lists are reasonably sensitive and comparable.Hude Quan, William A. Ghali, Stafford Dean, Colleen Norris, Diane Galbraith, Peter Faris, Michelle M. Graham, & Merril L. Knudtson. (2004). Validity of using surname to define Chinese ethnicity. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 95(4), 314–314.
The American Journal of EpidemiologyAmerican Journal of Epidemiology. (n.d). About | American Journal of Epidemiology | Oxford Academic. https://academic.oup.com/aje/pages/About published a paper conducted from the same research in Ontario, Canada by Choi et al. (1993),Choi, B., Hanley, J., Holowaty, E., & Dale, D. (1993). Use of Surnames to Identify Individuals of Chinese Ancestry. American Journal of Epidemiology, 138(9), 723–734. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a116910 using the Ontario all-cause mortality database from 1982–1989 to test if the surnames accurately identify individuals of Chinese ethnicity. The databases were randomly split into two and then compiled against varying cut-offs of positive likelihood ratios; surnames that did not meet the cut-off were then matched against the Book of Hundred Family Names (1973).nonymous. (1973). Standard phonetic of Pai Chia Sing Chien Tzih Wen in English (hundred family names). Hong Kong: World Publishing Co. The results proved reasonably positive, with high levels of sensitivity, positive predictive value, and positive likelihood ratio for both males and females. The research team did not find a universal set of Chinese ancestry names that can be applied in epidemiology studies. However, the authors proposed that every location may require ancestral names produced in its period to ensure accuracy and reliability.
Implications of current Chinese surname system; research on a new surname system
Chinese surnames have a history of three thousand years. The system of Chinese surnames was developed to distinguish different families and prevent the marriage of individuals from the same family names.Chao, Sheau-yueh J. (2009). 尋根溯源中國人的姓氏: Genealogical Research on Chinese Surnames. Clearfield. p. 3. ISBN 978-0806349466. However, a study done by Zhang (2009),Zhang, J. (2009). Design Method of the New Chinese Nation Surname System. Systems Engineering (Amsterdam), 29(10), 188–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1874-8651 (10)60079-8 found that in the current Chinese surname system, there is a deep-rooted traditional belief that families have a preference for having a male child since surnames are passed on to the sons of the families. This study aimed to propose a new surname system so that children would adopt neither of their parents' surnames, but parental surnames could be inferred from their surnames.
Another study published investigated the effects of China's two-child policy on its gender ratio.Xu, B., & Pak, M. (2015). Gender ratio under China's two-child policy. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 119, 289–307. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2015.08.008 . It asserts that the previous one-child policy induced attempts at manipulating the birth process. The move towards a two-child policy which should suggest that the gender imbalance in China would improve substantially required closer examination. Comparing India, Vietnam, and South Korea that do not enforce a one-child policy it found the same gender imbalance as China,Chun, H., & Das Gupta, M. (2009). Gender discrimination in sex-selective abortions and its transition in South Korea. Women's Studies International Forum, 32(2), 89–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2009.03.008 . which highlights the intensity and pervasiveness of son-preference and attempts to build a model of parental decision-making and attempts to manipulate the birth of children to increase the likelihood of a male. It concludes that the move towards a two-child policy may show initial improvements in gender imbalance, but where an underlying preference for a male child remains, the problem of inequality will not improve.
An article published in Nature,Scientific Reports. (n.d.). About Scientific Reports | Scientific Reports. https://www.nature.com/srep/about found that the birth rate per woman had dropped from 5.4 in 1971 to 1.8 in 2001,all, P. (2008). Where have all the flowers gone? At the beginning of the 21st century, at least 117 boys were born for every 100 girls in China. Philip Ball asks whether Chinese birth rates can be controlled without exacerbating the gender imbalance. Nature (London), 454(7203), 374–. by China's one-child policy enforced in 1979,Scharping, Thomas (2003). Birth control in China 1949–2000: Population policy and demographic development. London: Routledge. due to selective determination of the gender of a child. According to Ball (2008), the primary cause of the gender-ratio imbalance is traditional values. The motivation for gender selection is partly welfare, in that a Chinese son is duty-bound to look after the needs of his parents, while a daughter's obligations transfer to her in-laws when she marries (Ball, 2009). With traditional gendered roles, a son carries on the family names, and a daughter is part of the in-law's family after marriage, which may have caused the gender ratio in China to become imbalanced.Ding, W., Zhang, Y., 2014. When a son is born: the impact of fertility patterns on family finance in rural China. China Econ. Rev. 30, 192–208. Zhang's (2009) study aims to address this problem and suggests that Chinese families could revise traditional views on gender roles, starting with a proposed new surname system.
Deriving social networks based on Chinese surnames
Chinese surnames are also applied to studies regarding social systems among individuals to construct complex networks where there are connections to and from individuals through what are considered 'edges' and 'nodes'.Borgatti, S., Brass, D., & Halgin, D. (2014). Social Network Research: Confusions, Criticisms, and Controversies. In Contemporary Perspectives on Organizational Social Networks (Vol. 40, pp. 1–29). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X (2014)0000040001. A study from Boston University and Beijing Normal University,Shi, Y., Li, L., Wang, Y., Chen, J., & Stanley, H. (2019). A study of Chinese regional hierarchical structure based on surnames. Physica A, 518(C), 169–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2018.11.059 aimed to "extend the network presentation of surname data to a spatial network and to investigate the Chinese regional hierarchical structure and geographical features behind the geographical distribution of surnames." The researchers obtained surnames and administrative regions at a provincial level of all the Chinese officially registered in China's National Citizen Identity Information Centre (NCIC). By constructing nodes on current networks, it aimed to demonstrate the social relationships between various provinces of China. The results supported the Tobler's First Law of Geography, which states that the most connected provinces in the spatial Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) are geographically adjacent and that all clusters identified are geographically continuous. The use of Chinese surnames not only helped this study to locate the local and global centers of China but also provided evidence of the historical mass migration to the Northeast (Alpha History, 2016).