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Tang Studies

ISSN: 0737-5034 (Print) 1759-7633 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ytng20

What's in a ? Central Asian Participation in the Culture of Naming of Medieval

Xin

To cite this article: Wen (2016) What's in a Surname? Central Asian Participation in the Culture of Naming of Medieval China, Tang Studies, 34:1, 73-98

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07375034.2016.1234994

Published online: 09 Dec 2016.

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Download by: [Harvard Library] Date: 09 December 2016, At: 12:54 Tang Studies, 34. 1, 73–98, 2016

WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? CENTRAL ASIAN PARTICIPATION IN THE CULTURE OF NAMING OF MEDIEVAL CHINA

XIN WEN Harvard University, USA

Medieval China, and particularly the Tang , witnessed unprecedented cul- tural interactions among Chinese and non-Chinese peoples. One well-researched aspect of these interactions is the changing practice of naming. By reading docu- ments in Central Asian , in particular Khotanese, in conjunction with transmitted Chinese records, this article highlights the distinctive Central Asian tra- dition in the use of . I argue that, unlike the better-studied North Asian tradition, in which were derived from usually multisyllabic tribal , surnames for Central Asian peoples were largely invented and not traceable in Central Asian languages. In particular, these surnames were usually monosyllabic and hence formally much closer to typical Chinese surnames. The Central Asian par- ticipation in the practice of surnaming did not introduce a large number of new sur- names, but it did profoundly influence what a surname could mean in medieval China.

KEYWORDS: Central , Medieval China, Surname, Khotan, cross-cultural identity

INTRODUCTION: A curious exchange of diplomatic jesting occurred in 450 between official from the southern - (420–479) and an envoy of the Northern (386–534) in front of the besieged city of Pengcheng.1 The army was approaching Pengcheng in retaliation for the Song’s unsuccessful northward campaign earlier in the same year. The seneschal in charge at Pengcheng, 張暢 (408–457),

I began the research for this article for my thesis at under the advice of Rong . I read many of the Khotanese texts discussed here with Professor Oktor Skjærvø and Zhang , who greatly helped my understanding of them. A draft of the article was presented at the “Stanford-Berkeley Pre-modern Chinese Humanities Graduate Student Confer- ence” in 2014, and Professor Albert Dien gave me useful suggestions. My friends Liu , , Lincoln Tsui, and Yin Hang also offered valuable criticism of the draft. I would like to express my gratitude to all those above for their help and encouragement. 1 For the background of this event and a full translation of related materials about this inci- dent, see Albert Dien, “The Disputation at Pengcheng: Accounts from the Weishu and the Songshu,” in Wendy Schwartz et al., eds., Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook (New York: Colum- bia University Press, 2014), 32–59.

©T’ Studies Society 2016 DOI 10.1080/07375034.2016.1234994 74 X. WEN after being recognized by the Northern Wei envoy as a famous personage, in turn asked the surname ( 姓) of the envoy.2 To this question the envoy responded:

“I am and do not have a surname.”

我是鮮卑，無姓。

This statement was both true and false. It was true in the general sense that Xianbei people originally had no surnames. Forty-five years after this incident, the Northern Wei still lamented that the Xianbei people’s initial lack of surnames pre- vented the emperor from extending his favor to the dependents of former prestigious officials.3 Yet, in the specific context of this exchange, the envoy’s response was clearly false: although Zhang Chang did not personally know who the northern envoy was, was able to find in his city someone who did. As it turned out, the envoy allegedly “without a surname” was actually Xiaobo 李孝伯 (d. 459), hailing from none other than the Li of Longxi 隴西, one of aristocratic in Chinese history. The prestige of this is attested, among other things, by the Tang royal family’s dubious claim to its affiliation.4 Li Xiaobo’s failed attempt at diplomatic disguise usefully reveals the central role of the social institution of surnaming in the negotiations between identity and , the Chinese and the non-Chinese in medieval China.5 As Patricia Ebrey remarks, “[t]he Chinese are unusual in world history in their system of family names (xing). There are of course many other patrilineal societies,

but few if any in which was so closely tied to from so early a period.”6 Family name or surname immediately contextualizes a person in a specific social setting of patrilineality. Particularly in the aristocratic society of medieval China where elite could attain status to rival the imperial family, a surname

2 As I will demonstrate in this article, the institution of xing was itself subject to change, manipulation, and, at the very least, multiple interpretations. It is misleading, and sometime plain wrong, to see occurrences of xing as necessarily denoting a patrilineal group. This is why, throughout the article, I have avoided translating xing as “family name,” and opted for a more neutral translation of “surname.” 3 Weishu 魏書 (: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 113.3014–15. 4 Chen Sanping, “Succession Struggle and the Ethnic Identity of the Tang Imperial House,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society [series 3] 6.3 (1996): 381. 5 The term “Chinese” is rich with problems and ambiguities. It is for this reason that Marc Abramson opted for the term "" in his book Ethnic Identity in Tang China (Philadelphia: Uni- versity of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Yet as Mark Elliott pointed out (“Hushuo: The Northern Other and the Naming of the ” in Thomas Mullaney et al. eds., Critical Han Studies [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011], 173–90), the history of term “Han” was no less problematic, and its “ethnic” sense in modern China obviously did not exist in the Tang. Therefore, I believe the use of “Han” for the study of the introduces more problems than it solves; and throughout this article I will adhere to the more generic term of “Chinese,” adopt- ing its cultural-linguistic rather than modern political implications. To use “China/Chinese” also has the added advantage that the term is cognate with the words for “China” in Central and South Asian languages (for instance: Sogdian cyn, cınā ) contemporary to the Tang. As the relation between the Tang and is the focus of this article, to use China/Chinese here seems appropriate and justified. 6 “Surnames and Han Chinese Identity,” in Patricia Buckley Ebrey ed., Women and the Family in Chinese History (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 21. WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 75 served as the most potent way of defining a patrilineal group and a person’s affilia- tion within it. Even in the waning years of the Tang dynasty (618–907), when med- ieval aristocratic families are believed to have been in decline, a leading surname such as from Qinghe or from Fanyang still promised a better prospect in mar- riage than even the imperial surname.7 In this historical context, the status of being “without surname” signifies social per- ipherality as well as cultural anonymity. Examples of people without surnames include monks not wanting to be identified by conventional social relations,8 dead people that lost such relations,9 wandering merchants,10 and, eventually, non-Chinese peoples who were seen as not having such social relations to begin with. The famous Northern Wei envoy Li Xiaobo was able to hide under surname-less anonymity in his diplomatic dealings, if only briefly, because the mutually held assumption by both the Chinese and the Xianbei that the Xianbei people were without surnames, and that surname- less people were, in a certain sense, unintelligible in the Chinese context. Unlike Li Xiaobo, whose anonymity was lifted by simply revealing his distin- guished true identity, numerous non-Chinese peoples, including the Xianbei people whom Li pretended to be, faced the much more real conundrum of not having immediately available surnames when they enter social relations with the Chinese. How did they make themselves known, culturally and personally, in the social context of medieval China? Did they use Chinese surnames? If yes, are their Chinese surnames related in any way to their original names in their own languages? In this article, I address these questions by investigating the ways in which Central Asian peoples participated in the social institution of surnaming in medieval China. Historians of medieval China, and particularly specialists on the Tang dynasty, have explored the possibilities of the rich cache of surnames contained in monu- mental works such as Yuanhe xingzuan 元和姓纂 and the “Zaixiang shixi biao” 宰 相世系表 in the Xin Tangshu. These sources have been exploited for insights into social organization, family structure, trans-regional mobility, and ethnic identities.11 There are also substantial specific treatments on the issue of non-Chinese use of Chinese surnames.12 Only recently have scholars initiated investigations into the constructed of Chinese surnames themselves.13 These works underscore

7 Xin Tangshu 新唐書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 172.5205–6. 8 Tangwen 全唐文 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 587.5937–8. 9 洪邁, Yijian zhi 夷堅志 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), 2.450. 10 Mark Edward Lewis, China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 24–25. 11 Da 向達, Tang Chang’an Xiyu wen 唐代長安與西域文明 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1957); Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Aristocratic Families of Early Imperial China : A Case Study of the Po- Tsʻui Family (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Nicolas Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014). 12 Weiyuan 姚薇元, Beichao huxing kao 北朝胡姓考 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962). Ma Chi 馬馳 “Shilun fanren Tang zhi jiqi xingming zhi hanhua” 試論番人仕唐之盛及 其姓名之漢化 in Xuemeng 鄭學檬 and Minsu 冷敏述 eds., Tang wenhua yanjiu lunwen 唐文化研究論文集 (: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1994), 312–41. 13 Qiu Luming 仇鹿鳴, “Panfu xianshi yu weimao shiji: Bohai Gaoshi wei zhongxin de yanjiu” 攀附先世與偽冒士籍:以渤海高氏為中心的研究, Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究 2008.2: 60–74. Yoshida Yutaka, “On the Origin of the Sogdian Surname Zhaowu and Related Problems,” Journal Asiatique 291 (2003): 35–67. 76 X. WEN the fact that surnames were not inflexible social categories, but were subject to fre- quent changes and manipulations. Such manipulations are especially observable when discussing Chinese surnames used by the non-Chinese, because in these cases, the surnames were more likely to be contemporary creations not rooted in well-established traditions. Addressing these issues in his discussion of ethnic change, Marc Abramson offers a succinct yet nuanced account of the process of non-Chinese acquiring Chinese surnames:14

For the most part, however, Tang state and society viewed the majority of non-Han, who were from tribal societies, as inherently lacking surnames. Thus, an early step of assimilation or acculturation of non-Han was often the establishment of a clan identity and name, the latter typically a full or abbreviated transliteration into two or more of the orig- inal tribal name. … The second step toward the of the surname was the of the multicharacter surname to a single character, often followed by a third step of adopting or receiving a new surname with a certified Han provenance.

In this fairly clear process of the acquisition of Chinese surnames by non-Chinese, the key point—the first step—is the transliteration of the “original tribal name” into Chinese characters. The next two steps involved the transformation of such unavoidably non-Chinese looking transliterations into names that conformed

more readily to the established Chinese norm of surnaming. This process, it should be noted, applied to North Asian peoples much better than other non- Chinese groups. As Central Asian kingdoms were founded on urban oasis societies that did not organize as tribes, Central Asian peoples were not identified by a “tribal name.” Instead, their Chinese surnames usually indicated the specific countries they were from. These surnames also tended to be mostly monosyllabic, and the process of “abbreviation of the multicharacter surname to a single character” is rarely seen. Most importantly, these surnames generally had very little to do with personal or country names in Central Asian languages. These features indicate that the Central Asian use of Chinese surnames is a clearer example of invention than the North Asian case. In this article, I shall focus on the Central Asian case in the hope of complementing Abramson’s account and providing a fuller picture. Because of the nature of existing sources, the Central Asian case offers more than a quantitative addition to our knowledge. Abramson points out that non-Chinese names survive “in the almost exclusively Sinitic sources.”15 This is largely true for North Asian peoples who adopted writing fairly late, and for whom relatively few written records survive.16 In the case of Central Asians, however, Chinese sources are by no means the only places we find records about their names. In fact, almost all of the Central Asian oasis states have left us with substantial writings in languages such as Gāndhārı̄Prakrit, Sogdian, Tocharian (A and B), Tumshuqese,

14 Ethnic Identity in Tang China, 155. 15 Ibid., 154. 16 Some of the most important early historical texts in the North Asian tradition, see Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968). WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 77 and Khotanese, in which rich information about the practice of naming can be found. These texts enable a thorough treatment of their indigenous naming practices, which can then be profitably compared with the process of acquiring Chinese names found in Chinese sources. Among the Central Asian kingdoms of the time, Khotan in par- ticular offers the richest textual records, as thousands of secular documents were dis- covered in various sites in the oases of Khotan as well as the library cave in . These documents are written not only in the middle Iranian of Khotanese, but also in Tibetan and Chinese.17 By putting these documents in dialogue with transmitted Chinese records, the mechanism of the production of non-Chinese surnames, often invisible in the North Asian case, becomes visible. Therefore, I will focus on the case of Khotan in this article, while incorporating results from research on other Central Asian peoples whenever necessary. Through a comparison of the local naming practice and the Chinese names they adopted, I argue in the first section that the Khotanese people maintained their surname-less tradition in Khotanese and other non-Chinese (for instance, Tibetan) contexts; the term generally regarded as the surname for of Khotan should be more properly understood as a royal . In the second section, I turn to their use of surnames in the Chinese context: the initial use of Chinese surnames for the Khotanese as well as other Central Asian peoples might have been necessi- tated by their interactions with the Chinese government; but in due time, the Kho- tanese people mastered the cultural significance of surnames and began adopting new and more useful Chinese surnames; they took an active, and often very creative, role in their participation in the culture of surnaming in medieval China. In the con- clusion of the article, I place my findings in the broader context of medieval Chinese understanding of naming, and argue that the Central Asian tradition complemented the better-studied North Asian tradition in making the surnaming a much more mal- leable process than as represented by some later Chinese critics, such as Xiu 歐陽修 (1007–1072). Such malleability was the key feature of the social institution of surnaming in medieval China.

SURNAMES AND KHOTANESE NAMING PRACTICES Khotan was an oasis state located in Eastern Central Asia that was first known in his- torical records through the report of Zhang in the second century BCE. From then on, Khotan conquered neighboring states and became the largest kingdom on the southern brink of the . During the early Tang, it maintained a certain level of autonomy, before being incorporated into the Tang garrison system in Central Asia at the end of the seventh century. Tang rule lasted for about one century until the replaced the Tang as the overlord of Khotan. After a half century of Tibetan rule, Khotan re-established its independence at the end of the ninth century. The next foreign conquest, this time from the Turkic Kara- khanids, brought about the end of Khotan as an Iranian speaking Buddhist kingdom, and ushered in the long process of Islamicization and Turkicization.18

17 R. . Emmerick, A Guide to the Literature of Khotan (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1992). 18 For a brief history of Pre-Islamic Khotan, see Kumomoto Hiroshi’s entry on Khotan in Encyclopedia Iranica, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/khotan-i-pre-islamic-history (accessed 78 X. WEN

The section on Khotan in the Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書 begins this way:19

As for the state of Khotan, to the southwest it borders the (=Congling), [to the northeast] it connects with . It is 9700 li to the west of the capital. The population capable of bearing arms numbers four thou- sand. This country produces excellent . The local customs are rich in intri- cate designs. They take pleasure in serving the Zoroastrian gods, and also honor . Previously Khotan was under the control of the Western Turks (=Tujue). The ’s surname is Yuchi, and his (given) name is Qumi.

于闐國，西南帶蔥嶺，與龜茲接，在京師西九千七百里。勝兵四千人。 其國出美玉。俗多機巧，好事祆神，崇佛教。先臣於西突厥。其王姓尉遲氏， 名屈密。

In line with the long established tradition of writing about Central Asia, the goal of keeping this record is to provide information that the Tang state deemed strategically important. Like its location, military capacity, and local products, the statement that “the (Khotanese) king’s surname is Yuchi” is included as one of the facts worth knowing about this kingdom by the Chinese historian. This assertion inspired research in modern academia when it seemed to have been substantiated with the discovery of texts written in the local language of the time, an eastern middle Iranian language known as Khotanese. Sten Konow was the first person to identify the supposed surname Yuchi with the Khotanese form Visá’/Visya,́ which, as he also 20 notes, has the variant transcription of Fushe 伏闍 in Chinese. This Khotanese form could be traced to the form Vij’ida in the name of a Khotanese king Vij’ida Siṃha in a Gāndhārı̄Prakrit document (no.661) discovered in Endere,21 and gave the later Khotanese form Vijita, as well as the Tibetan transcription Bijiya.22 This discovery of the source for Yuchi seemed to prove that Yuchi and Visá’ were two forms of the same surname of the Khotanese kings. This identification was then used as evidence for the relation between the Yuchi of Khotan and the Yuchi of Xianbei, a Northern Asian people who established various states in Northern China during the era of fragmentation between the Han and the Tang . In his seminal work on the “foreign surnames” Beichao huxing kao 北朝胡姓考, Yao Weiyuan 姚薇元 cited the record in Jinshu 晉書 that “Qifu Lina attacked Yuchi Kequan at Dafeichuang, and collected over 30,000 households” and comments that the Yuchi “tribe” was located around Dafeichuang, within the domain of the ; and since the Tuyuhun king once invaded Khotan, and killed the Khotanese king, the Yuchi tribe must have, according to Yao, joined this military expedition and thereafter remained in Khotan. This explanation on January 10, 2016). A fuller treatment of the history of Khotan from the seventh to the tenth century can be found in Rong Xinjiang 榮新江, “TōSōjidai Uten shi gaisetsu” 唐宋時代于闐史 概說, Ryūkoku shidan 97 (1991): 28–38. 19 Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 198.5305. 20 S. Konow, “Khotan Studies,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 46.2 (1914): 342–43, 347. 21 T. A. Burrow, A Translation of the Documents from Chinese Turkestan (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1940), 137. 22 R. E. Emmerick, Tibetan Texts concerning Khotan (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 76–77. WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 79 places the beginning of the Yuchi “house” in Khotan in 445.23 Yiliang 周一良 refuted Yao’s thesis, and proposes instead that the Yuchi tribe in origi- nated from Khotan and moved in the 3rd and 4th century into north China.24 Both of them, it should be noted, find no problem connecting the Yuchi of Khotan with the Yuchi of Xianbei. This view has recently been developed further by Yu Jing.25 Edwin Pulleyblank, on the other hand, connected the “Yuchi” in Jinshu with the notoriously elusive name “ 月支” and expressed doubts about Visá’ being the origin of Yuezhi as a Khotanese “surname.”26 Enoki Kazuo disagreed with Pull- eyblank’s suggestion and regarded the (Minor) Yuezhi and Yuchi as unrelated. But he also saw the Khotanese surname Yuchi as not directly related to the Yuchi from north China, since it was “used in China long before the Khotanese king began to use it.”27 In this way, he also departed from Yao and Zhou in distinguishing two types of Yuchi as surnames. One of the problems with the identification of Yuchi and Visá’ and the line of research inspired by this identification is that an important assumption is left unex- amined, namely whether the Khotanese kings had a “surname” in the first place. This does not appear to pose any question if one relies solely on the Chinese sources such as the Jiu Tangshu, which explicitly states: “the king’s surname is Yuchi.” But it does become problematic if one examines local Khotanese and Tibetan sources. Two questions regarding this statement from Jiu Tangshu clearly come to the fore when these non-Chinese sources are considered. First, as Khotan – a kingdom of Middle-Iranian speaking people – had rather different social and familial structures from the Chinese, does it make sense to talk about “surname” in the Khotanese context? Second, why were the Chinese characters Yuchi chosen to be the surname of the Khotanese kings in the Chinese context? Regarding the concept of “surname” in Khotan, the earliest information of a Kho- tanese royal name comes from a Gāndhārı̄Prakrit text, where the king is called Vij’ida Siṃha.28 From this time onwards, the royal name, when appearing in the Khotanese context, always carries Visá’ or Vijitta. As Harold Bailey points out, the former is the indigenous Khotanese form, while the latter is its equivalent in Bud- dhist Sanskrit.29 Since Sanskritized forms are found in many names of kings and commoners in Khotan, it is not surprising that the word Visá’ itself also has a San- skritized form. The meaning of this term is probably also connected to the Sanskrit word Vijaya, meaning “victory.”30 However, the meaning itself does not tell us much

23 Beichao huxing kao, 189–98. The quote is found in Jinshu 晉書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 125.3113–14. 24 Weijin Nanbeichao shi zhaji 魏晉南北朝史劄記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 401–2. 25 Yu Jing 余靜 “Suitang wudai shiqi de yuchi shi” 隋唐五代時期的尉遲氏, Shiyuan 郝時 遠 and Luo Xianyou 羅賢佑 eds., Mengyuanshi ji minzushi lunji, Jinian Dujian xiansheng danchen yibai zhounian 蒙元史暨民族史論集:紀念翁獨健先生誕辰一百周年 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2006), 592–603. 26 Edwin G. Pulleyblank, “Chinese and Indo-Europeans,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 98.1/2 (1966): 18. 27 Enoki Kazuo chosakushū榎一雄著作集 (Tokyo: Kyūko shoin, 1992), 342. 28 T. A. Burrow, A Translation of the Kharosthi Documents from Chinese Turkestan, 137. 29 H. W. Bailey, The Culture of the in Ancient Iranian Khotan (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1982), 45. 30 Bailey also pointed out the existence of a phrase “vi nanavi,” meaning “land of Vi” in Kho- tanese and proposed to see it Visá’ as its adjectival form. See ibid, 45. 80 X. WEN about the nature of the term in the names of Khotanese kings. To determine if this constant part of a royal name indeed functioned as a “surname,” one needs to know if it was limited within a family or a lineage and passed down generationally. Most fundamentally, it is necessary to determine if the Khotanese society employed the idea of “surname.” From the excavated Khotanese documents, it is clear that Khotanese names do not usually contain any part that should be interpreted as a surname. There are numer- ous examples in this regard. For instance, in a name-list of people involved in mili- tary inspection that contains 157 names, except for Vidyadatta whose name is a bit ambiguous, none of the other names contain a surname.31 This text is represen- tative of the situation in the vast majority of Khotanese documents. Such surname- less status is also clear from Chinese transcriptions of Khotanese names. In a Chinese-Khotanese bilingual name-list, the names of twenty-eight people from five different villages (Khotanese bisā-, Chinese cun 村) are listed. None of them has a surname in either Chinese or Khotanese.32 More revealing on this issue are documents in which fathers and sons appear ́ together. In an issued by a sṣau-officiaḷ named Sattuṃ, we find “sıḍ̄akä pūrä sılā̄ṃvinkä (Sıḍ̄aka’s son, young Sılā̄ṃ).”33 The and the son have entirely different names with no shared part. A similar case can be found in a letter by a spāta-official named Iramaña,̄ which mentions the names of his three children: Irasam̄ ̣ga, Jsijsıyā and Vilāya.34 Similarly, a colophon on a Buddhist text gives the names of a brother of an unknown donor as Ṣkāṃca and his three sons as Spara- datta, Māṃḍaka and Phattaña.35 From these examples, it is evident that Khotanese method of naming, as was the older Iranian tradition from which it derived, did not require the part of “surname.” Most Khotanese names known in Tibetan texts also do not contain the part of surname.36 When people with the same name had to be distinguished, the names of villages are added to the as a means of differentiation. In an economic document about the transactions of grains, for instance, two people with the same name Ṣanırakā are mentioned. In order to dis- tinguish them, the first Ṣanırakā is given the epithet of “b[i]rgaṃdara mattiská ̄ṃña,” meaning that he is from the village of Mattiská in the region of Birgaṃdara.37

31 P. . Skjærvø, Khotanese Manuscripts from Chinese Turkestan in the British Library. A Complete Catalogue with Texts and Translations, with contribution by U. Sims-Williams (London: British Library Publishing, 2003), 104–6. 32 Qing, “Bisā- and Hālaa- in a Chinese-Khotanese Bilingual Document,” Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 3 (2008): 66. The Chinese forms of the names were strict trans- literations of the Khotanese forms. 33 The of the document is SI P103.38. See Ronald E. Emmerick and Margarita I. Vorob"ëva-Desjatovskaja, Corpus inscriptionum Iranicarum. 2: Inscriptions of the Seleucid and Parthian periods and of Eastern Iran and Central Asia. 5: . Saka documents. text volume III: The St. Petersburg collections (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1995), 151. SI. P. indicates Serindia Petrovsky in the St. Petersburg collection. 34 Khotanese Manuscripts, 270–71. For the sṣaụ and spāta officials, see my article “Yutian guanhao kao” 于闐國官號考, Dunhuang tulufan yanjiu 11 (2009): 121–46. 35 Khotanese Manuscripts, 355. 36 For examples, see F. W. Thomas, Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents concerning Chinese Turkestan, Part II: Documents (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1951), 260–4. 37 Khotanese Manuscripts,85–86. WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 81

As mentioned above, Khotan was under Chinese rule for almost a century. Hence it is conceivable that the local tradition might have received some Chinese influence in naming practice. A letter fragment mentions that “sí pattaha hıyaī mara brrāta sṭẹ ́ ́ sí hvartcayanä ną̅mä,” meaning “Si Pattaha’s brother is here [whose] name is Si 38 ́ Hvartcayana.” Here the part Si might have served as a surname. This document uses the animal zodiac and therefore should be dated to the era of Tibetan rule of Khotan, which occurred after the Chinese rule. By the time of the Tibetan conquest, Khotan was cut off from China proper, but many Chinese soldiers remained in Khotan. This is an extremely rare case of a possible surname, and could be evidence that some Khotanese people accepted the idea of surname after a century of Chinese rule; it is also possible that these were who had taken Khotanese given names. The use of surnames in Khotanese texts is slightly more common in another later corpus of texts, the Dunhuang Library Cave collection. The majority of this collec- tion can be dated to the tenth century when Khotan became once again an indepen- dent country.39 A particularly revealing document in the Dunhuang collection is a ́ colophon of the Khotanese Jātakastava. The donor of this text is CāKımǟ Sąnä, the central figure of the colophon. The people mentioned in this colophon are ́ 40 listed below, with their relation to CāKımǟ Sąnä in parenthesis:

First generation: CāPina (father) Hūmāṃ(mother), ́ Second generation: CāKımǟ Sąnä—Kımā Hva ()

CāTaiba Tcainä Kharūsạ (brother), Sıdyakavarrdā (monk, brother), Dhar- majña (monk, brother), Sūraimaitrrā(sister)

Third generation: Rūpājıvā̄, Jvālakyā(both daughters) ́ CāKımǟ Sąnä is known in other Chinese documents as Zhang Jinshan 張金山, and ́ 41 CāKımǟ Sąnä is the Khotanese transcription of this . His father, Cā Pina, has the of Pūhya, which is a transcription of the Chinese title Puye 仆射.In this case, the shared part of their names Cā, from Chinese Zhang, is clearly a surname. While his mother’s name is difficult to identify, his wife’s name is evidently transcribed from Chinese (Kımā Hva < *Jin Hua 金花?). His brother, on the other hand, has a name consisting of a Chinese surname (Cā), a Chinese (Taiba Tcainä), and a Khotanese given name (Kharūsa);̣ and the two daughters of

38 Ibid., 276. 39 For the presence of the Khotanese people and Khotanese texts in tenth century Dunhuang, see Kumamoto Hiroshi, “The Khotanese in Dunhuang,” in A. Cadonna and L. Lanciotte, eds., Cina e Iran da Alessandro Magno alla dinastia Tang (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1996), 79–101. According to Kumamoto (p. 82n6), “the only distinctively Khotanese surname would be Weichi (= Yuchi) which is related to the Khotanese royal family.” As I will argue, Yuchi is a surname in the Chinese context, but not in the Khotanese context. 40 Khotanese Manuscripts, 299. 41 Zhang Guangda 張廣達 and Rong Xinjiang 榮新江, “Guanyu Dunhuang chutu Yutian wenxian de niandai jiqi xiangguan wenti” 關於敦煌出土于闐文獻的年代及其相關問題, Yutian shi congkao 于闐史叢考 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1993), 117–18. 82 X. WEN

Zhang Jinshan both have Khotanese names. Conceivably, they would have been called *CāRūpājıvā̄and *CāJvālakyāin more formal settings. In this way, the Chinese surnames are combined with Khotanese given names, producing Sino- Khotanese hybrid names. There are many similarly structured names from Dun- 42 43 ́ manuscripts: YūSaṃgalaka, DūṃSaṃgalakā, Sı̄Kvaina, CāKrrası́sa,̄ Kva Ṣanıraka.̄ 44 They could have been produced in much the same fashion. Additionally, there are also Tibeto-Khotanese hybrid names.45 To summarize, in texts from the tenth century we begin to see some traces of the ́ use of a surname in Khotanese naming. But all of the surnames, such as Yū,Dūṃ,Sı,̄ Cā, or Kva, are apparently transcriptions of Chinese surnames.46 So the users of “surnames” such as Zhang Jinshan would likely have had Chinese origins as well, being possibly the descendants of Chinese garrison soldiers that the Tang dynasty stationed in Khotan. It is also important to note that, while these hybrid names are found in several later texts, the vast majority of the thousands of Khotanese secular documents, including the ones from the tenth century, contain only single names without surnames. While Khotanese society in the tenth century, with the introduction of Chinese, Tibetan, and even Uyghur elements, was certainly becom- ing more multicultural, surname remained a foreign concept that was not widely accepted or used by the Khotanese.47 The case of the Khotanese royal family is worth special attention. As mentioned above, the names of Khotanese kings all contain the part Visá’, which could either be a surname or an honorary title. In order to determine the more plausible expla- nation, one should look beyond the names of kings and into the names of other members of the royal family. The names of Khotanese appear only occasionally in documents from Khotan.48 More information on the princes is found in Khotanese materials from Dunhuang. The names of princes I have found in the Dunhuang collection include Tcūsyau,49 Stamä, Thiyä Tcūna, ́ 50 51 52 53 54 Yimnakä, Svakala, Halai, Svahaṃka, PūYaṃ, Tcūṃ-ttehi, and

42 IOL Khot S.2 (Ch.0043), in Khotanese Manuscripts, 481. IOL indicates “Indian office library.” 43 IOL Khot S.18 (Ch.00327), ibid., 520. 44 These three names are found in IOL Khot S.31(Ch 0046), IOL Khot S.33(Ch. 0046c), in ibid., 536. 45 H. Kumamoto, “Two Khotanese Fragments concerning Thyai Padä-tsā,” Tokyo University Linguistics Paper 11 (1991): 111. 46 For the Khotanese transcriptions of Chinese, see: Takata Tokio 高田時雄, “Kōtan monjo chūno Kango goi” コータン文書中の漢語語彙,inKangoshi no shomondai 漢語史の諸問題 (Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1988), 71–127. 47 It is also important to remember the point made by Kumamoto Hiroshi (“The Khotanese in Dunhuang”) that our extant records on tenth-century Khotan focus not on the kingdom of Khotan but on a Khotanese community in Dunhuang. The multicultural elements were certainly found in this immigrant community. How similar the situation in the kingdom of Khotan itself may have been is hard to know for certain. 48 Khotanese Manuscripts, 561. 49 Ibid., 499. 50 Ibid., 510. 51 Ibid., 519. 52 Ibid., 536. 53 Ibid., 540. 54 R. E. Emmerick, “The Verses of Tcūm-ttehi:,” Studia Iranica 9.2 (1980): 185–93. WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 83

Tcūṃ-hyenä.55 None of them contain the part of Visá’. This situation seems to have translated into Chinese as well: the names of Khotanese princes in Chinese histories include Yehu Dian 葉護玷 and Yehu Yao 葉護曜 (Yehu meaning “viceroy,” < Turkic yagbu),56 Decong 德從57 (equivalent to Congde 從德 in , and could be identified with the Khotanese name Tcūṃ-ttehi), and Zongchang 總嘗.58 In this regard, a passage in the Tibetan Buddhist text Li yul lung bstan pa (Prophecy of the Li Country) is particularly revealing:59

Then King Vijaya Jaya by name had three sons. The eldest son called ‘-‘dros did not desire sovereignty and went to the country of to acquire merits. His junior, the middle brother, also not desiring the sovereignty, became a monk. Receiving the name Dharmānanda, he went to India to study religion; the youngest acceded to the throne and received the name Vijaya . King Vijaya Dharma was brave, of great prowess, and took delight in hunts.

de nas rgyal po bijaya jaya zhes bgyi la bu spun gsum mchis te / phu rab ‘don ‘dros zhes bgyi ba rgyal srid ma ‘tshal te / bsod nams bgyid cing rgya gar yul du mchis / de’i nu bo bar ma rgyal srid ma ‘tshal nas ba nder zhugs te ming dharmānanda zhes btags nas rgya gar yul du chos slob mchis / nu bo tha chungs rgyal sar zhugs te / ming bijaya dharmar btags rgyal po bijaya dharma de dpa’ zhing rtsal bas gsod rkyen dag la dga’ nas /

This is a story of a royal succession among three princes. The first brother had the name ‘Don-‘dros; the second brother “received” a monastic name Dharmānanda after becoming a monk; and it was the youngest brother who eventually inherited the throne and became the king. After the enthronement, he “received the name Vijaya Dharma.” In the latter two cases, the same verb btags (“labeled, attached”) is used to describe the process of acquiring a new name. Therefore, the process of gaining a new sovereign name was probably similar to that of gaining a new mon- astic name. It is important to note that the two elder brothers never carried Vijaya (Tib. bijaya) in their names. The story goes on to describe a dispute between the oldest and the youngest brothers after the latter became the king. And the names of both of them are mentioned at multiple places. In all these occurrences, the older brother is consistently called ‘Don-‘dros, whereas the king, the youngest brother, carries the name Vijaya Dharma. Dunhuang documents afford another example of the difference between names of a prince and the sovereign name of the same person after enthronement. The name of prince Tcūṃ-ttehi (r. 967–977, < Chinese Congde 從德) appears in many different manuscripts in both Chinese and Khotanese.60 After he became the king, he

55 ́ ́ H. W. Bailey, “Srı̄VisaŚ ūra and the Ta-uang,” Asia Major new series 11.1 (1964): 20. 56 Xin Tangshu, 221A.6235–36. 57 Zizhizhongjian Changbian 續資治通鑑長編 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 7.167. 58 Songshi 宋史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), 490.14107. 59 R. E. Emmerick, Tibetan Texts concerning Khotan,34–35. 60 Zhang Guangda and Rong Xinjian, “Dunhuang wenshu P.3510 (Yutianwen) Congde taizi fayuanwen jiqi niandai” 敦煌文書P.3510 (于闐文)從德太子發願文及其年代, Yutianshi congkao, 59–70. 84 X. WEN discarded the old name, which was transcribed from Chinese, and adopted the new ́ name Visá’ Sūra. Combining these two cases, it is evident that there was in Khotan a system of changing the name of a prince after he became the king. The process involves two aspects: the change of name from non-Sanskrit to Sanskrit, and the addition of Visá’ at the beginning of the name.61 Visá’ therefore functioned as an honorary epithet and not a surname. In fact, another word is used similarly to ́ Visá’. This is the common Sanskrit word Srı̄(auspiciousness). In the tenth century, particularly during the reign of Visá’ Saṃgrāma, this word is a stable part of the names of Khotanese kings. In a fragmentary wooden document with only the ́ 62 dating section at the beginning intact, we even have the name Vıs̄á’ Srı̄Dharma. In this case, it is impossible to separate the name and see “Visá’ Dharma” as exhibit- ́ ́ ing a “surname-given name” structure and Srı̄as an honorific title. Both Vıs̄á’and Srı̄ must have been honorific components of the royal name. To conclude, in the context of Khotanese texts, Vıs̄á’ was not understood as a surname; and the very concept of surnaming also did not exist in Khotanese society. Only after the mass influx of Chinese immigrants into Khotan do we see some traces of the use of surname in Khotanese. All of them, it should be empha- sized, have Chinese-like surnames, and are probably cases of people of Chinese heri- tage writing in Khotanese. Does this conclusion mean that the claim of the Khotanese king having a surname Yuchi is merely a convention in Chinese records with no actual Khotanese basis? To answer this question, we need to turn to contemporary Chinese records, and address the issue of Central Asian use of Chinese surnames more broadly.

ACQUIRING CHINESE SURNAMES By the beginning of the imperial period of the and the Han dynasties, a typical Chinese name consisted of a surname (xing or shi) and a given name (ming); this practice of naming persisted during the imperial period from the Han through the Tang and until the present day, with only minor changes.63 But such consistency is not found in the names of Central Asian peoples in the Chinese records. The tra- dition of such records began with the chapter on 大宛 in Shiji and reached its canonical form in the Xiyu 西域 chapter in Hanshu.64 Later official histories, including the ones produced during the Tang, followed the Hanshu precedent. In these earlier works, Central Asian peoples conspicuously lack any surnames. Take

61 This process is comparable to the acquisition of new names among nomadic societies in North Asia. According to Luo Xin 羅新, “the appearance of a new Khan name is to afford the person about to become the Khan an entirely new identity.” See “Kehanhao yanjiu” 可汗號研究, Zhongguo shehui kexue 中國社會科學 26.2 (2005): 183. The Khotanese case could be similarly understood. 62 IOL Khot Wood 15, Khotanese Manuscripts, 563. 63 For the difference in the practice of surnaming during the pre-Qin period, see 李學勤, “Kaogu yu gudai xingshi zhidu” 考古發現與古代姓氏制度, Kaogu 1987.3: 253–57. 64 For a critical edition of these texts see Yu Taishan 余太山, Lianghan Weijin Nanbeichao zhengshi xiyuezhuan yaozhu 兩漢魏晉南北朝正史西域傳要注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2005). The standard treatment of the Hanshu text is A. F. P. Hulsewé, China in Central Asia, The Early Stage:125 B.C.–A.D.23 (Leiden: Brill, 1979). WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 85 one famous episode in the political in the first century for example:65

By the end of the Jianwu reign (25–56 CE), King of Shache became dominant, attacking and annexing Khotan. He relocated King Yulin of Khotan to become the king of Ligui. During the Yongping reign of emperor Ming (58–75 CE), a general of Khotan, Xiumoba, rebelled against Shache and proclaimed himself the king of Khotan. After the death of Xiumoba, his elder brother’s son Guangde succeeded the title, ultimately destroying Shache and reviving the fortunes of the state.

建武末，莎車王賢強盛，攻并于窴，徙其王俞林为驪歸王。明帝永平中， 于窴將休莫霸反莎車，自立為于窴王。休莫霸死，兄子廣德立，後遂滅莎 車，其國轉盛。

Most of the figures involved in this episode, if they had had patrilineal surnames, would not have shared the same ones. First, the king of Shache, a powerful state located near modern Yarkand between and Khotan, had the name Xian. The king of Khotan he dethroned was named Yulin. Xiumoba was the general who usurped the throne and passed it on to his brother’s son Guangde. In this group of four names, no explicit surnames can be found. The lineages of the kings of Shache and Khotan during this period are known from other sources, and they share no common part with the name “Xian” or “Yulin.”66 Importantly, whereas

the name of the usurper Xiumoba is most likely a phonetic transcription from a local language, his elder brother’s son is named Guangde, an auspicious Chinese name and not a phonetic rendering. According to the Chinese naming practice well established at the time, a brother and his elder brother’s son should have shared a common surname. But clearly, the Chinese record keeper did not see any problem in having people from Central Asia named in a completely different manner. The earliest traces of Central Asian adoption of Chinese- surnames are found in the country of Kucha (Qiuci 龜茲) in the Later (25–220). Pre-Tang dynastic histories record Ba 白霸, Bai Ying 白英, Bai Chun 白純, and Bai 白震.67 Although these records do not yet specify that the character “Bai” was a surname, the most salient feature of Chinese surnames for Central Asian peoples is already apparent in this case, namely that the “surname” was used to identify a country instead of a patrilineal group. This principle is even clearer among some of the other earlier cases, where the name of a country is abbreviated to become the surname for people from that country: people from Anxi 安息 (Parthia) were given the surname “An,” Yuezhi 月支 the surname “Zhi,” and 康居 the name “,” so on and so forth. This is how most individuals from Central Asia in this period were referred to, including the well-known An Shigao 安世高

65 Hanshu 後漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 88.2915–16. 66 For a list of relevant names, see Congjiang 賈丛江, “Lianghan shiqi Xiyu hanshi xingming tanwei” 兩漢時期西域人漢式姓名探微, Xiyu yanjiu 16.4 (2006): 13. 67 Yao Weiyuan, Beichao huxing kao, 371–72. 86 X. WEN

(fl. second century CE) and 支謙 (fl. third century CE).68 Therefore, from this early period on, Chinese surnames used by Central Asians were clearly orga- nized in a way that people from the same country were given the same surname. The specific process of converting a person without surname into one with a surname can be seen on a wooden slip found in Loulan dated to the third or fourth century, where the names of two soldiers from Yuezhi were recorded in the following manner:69

Soldier, ()zhi foreigner, Bucheng; soldier, (Yue)zhi foreigner, Chongyinde.

兵支胡簿成 兵支胡重寅得

The record here gives the place of origin (“Zhi” = Yuezhi) and the names of these two soldiers. Separating these two parts is the term 胡 (“foreigner, barbarian”). Both of the soldiers’ names, Bucheng and Chongyinde, are likely transcriptions of non- Chinese names. In this case, the character Zhi served as a tag signifying the place of origin of the soldiers. Because this tag already indicated their foreignness, the middle part (Hu) could be conceivable omitted, producing names such as *Zhi Bucheng and *Zhi Chongyinde. In this process of omitting hu, the character Zhi would become something resembling a surname. These excavated non-Chinese names are structurally the same as the more famous ones such as An Shigao, the pro- duction of which could be similarly understood. The use of Chinese surnames for Central Asian peoples solidified into a social norm in the Tang dynasty, when practically every person from Central Asia assumed one surname or another. In Table I, I have assembled the references to sur- names in the chapters on “” 西域 in the official histories from the Han to the Tang dynasties.70 This table reveals that official histories after the Suishu record the extensive use of surnames for peoples from the “Western Regions,” whereas Hanshu and Hou Hanshu do not make such use. A general pattern is clearly visible: the use of sur- names became a norm for describing non-Chinese peoples by the Tang dynasty.71 As it is unlikely that these various societies of drastically different linguistic and cul- tural traditions all began using surnames simultaneously, we can be confident that the shift was a historiographical one, rather than a historical one. Non-Chinese peoples began to have surnames in Chinese records not because they adopted

68 For a case study of one individual with the surname An, see Antonino Forte, The Hostage An Shigao and His Offspring: An Iranian Family in China (Kyoto: Istituto Italiano du Cultura, Scuola Studi sull’Asia Orientale, 1995). 69 Hou Can侯燦, Loulan Hanwen jianzhi wenshu jicheng 樓蘭漢文簡紙文書集成 (: Tiandi chubanshe, 1999), 379. 70 HS = Hanshu, HHS = Houhan , JS = Jinshu, LS = Liangshu, WS = Weishu, ZS = Zhoushu, SS = Suishu, NS = Nanshi, BS = Beishi, TD = Tangdian, JTS = Jiu Tangshu, XTS = Xin Tangshu. “x” Means that in that certain record no surnames are mentioned. “?” Suggests that in this entry, fathers and sons share same elements in their names. But they are not explicitly called surname in the text. Empty entry means that there is no account of this state in this particular text. 71 My preliminary examination shows that this is not only true for peoples in the “Western Regions,” but also for peoples from other border areas. This important question will have to be dealt with elsewhere. TABLE I SURNAMES IN CHAPTERS ON WESTERN REGIONS IN OFFICIAL HISTORIES

Pre-Tang Tang and Post-Tang Compositions Compositions Country HS HHS JS LS WS ZS SS NS BS TD JTS XTS

Khotan x x x x x 王 x 王 尉遲 尉遲 尉遲 Shule x x x x x 裴裴裴 Quici/Kucha x 白(?) 帛(?) x 白白 白x 白白 Yanqi/Agni x x 龍(?) x 龍龍 龍龍龍龍(?) Tianzhu/India x 乞利咥 乞利咥 乞利咥 /Turfan 闞闞,麴麴麴麴麴 麴 麴 支支

Baiti Kepantuo x x x x x x Bosi 波斯 x 波斯 x 波斯 波波斯 x 波斯 Kang x x 溫 溫溫溫溫 An x x x x 昭武 昭武 昭武 x 石石石石

Shi WHAT Bohan=Ningyuan 昭武 昭武 x

嚈噠 ’

Yidan xx SURNAME? A IN S 昭武 昭武 昭武? Shi 昭武 昭武 昭武 昭武? He 昭武 昭武 昭武 昭武? Wunahe 昭武 昭武 昭武 昭武 昭武 昭武 昭武 87 Nü 蘇毗 蘇毗 蘇毗 x 88 X. WEN surnames in their own cultural contexts, but because the Chinese record-keepers began to see non-Chinese peoples in such terms.72 Similar to the broader Central Asian situation, the Khotanese kings appear without a surname in pre- Chinese sources.73 The only clear exception is found in an epitaph of a Khotanese princess, who was married to the emperor of Northern Wei. In this epitaph, is given the surname Yu, presumably from “Yutian,” the Chinese name of Khotan.74 This method of surnaming is in line with the usual way of producing non-Chinese surnames at the time, such as that of An Shigao – “An” indicating that the person was from the An country – discussed earlier. The chapter on “Western Regions” in Suishu is the first text to give the Khotanese king a surname. The part on Khotan in this text begins thus:75

The Kingdom of Khotan has its capital more than two hundred li north of the Pamir Mountains. Its king has the surname , and the Bishibilian.

于闐國，都葱嶺之北二百餘里。其王姓王，字卑示閉練。

The writing of Suishu was completed in the first month of 636,76 but the chapter on “Western Regions” is generally believed to derive from ’s裴矩 (547–627) work Xiyu tuji 西域圖記 (An Illustrated Record of the Western Regions).77 It is significant that at this time, the idea that the Khotanese king had a surname “Yuchi” had not yet

72 A tenth century example of North Asian people makes this process explicit: “Khitan used to not have surnames. Han, upon his appointment as the Jiedu(shi) 節度 (governor), assumed Xiao as his surname and Han as his given name. Thereafter, people from Han’s tribe all assumed the surname of Xiao” 契丹比無姓氏，翰將有節度之命，乃以蕭為姓，翰為名，自是翰之一族皆稱 姓蕭. See Jiu Wudai shi 舊五代史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 1976), 98.1316. Xiao Han, whose Khitan name was not recorded, only acquired the surname of Xiao upon the appointment as Jie- dushi 節度使. Even though this is an operation within the Khitan state, the transition in Xiao Han’s life from a North Asian tribal leader to a Tang-style provincial official called for the use of surname, presumably because the bureaucratic tradition required that each person entering this system should bear a surname. Similarly, in as early as the fifth century, in a slave sale contract with a Chinese person, the name of the Sogdian seller is recorded with a surname. See Tang Zhangru 唐長孺 et al. eds., Tulufan chutu wenshu 吐魯番出土文書 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1981) 187. The fact that the Chinese context necessitated the use of Chinese-style surnames is most evident in bilingual texts in which surnames only exist in the Chinese. For the Sogdian- Chinese and Pahlavi-Chinese epitaphs, see my discussion below. 73 Fanren 孟凡人, “Hanwei yutian wangtong kao” 漢魏于闐王統考, Xinjiang kaogu yu shidi lunji 新疆考古與史地論集 (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 2000), 197–207. SaitōTatsuya’s recent article lists the changes in the Chinese surnames used by Khtoanese kings. See SaitōTatsuya “Kango bunken ni okeru Kōtan ōzoku no seishi - shutsudo bunken to hensan shiryōni yoru saikentō” 漢語 文獻におけるコータン（于闐）王族の姓氏――出土文獻と編纂史料による再檢討, Tonkō shahon kenkyūnenpō10 (2016): 357–70. 74 趙超, Hanwei Nanbeichao muzhi huibian 漢魏南北朝墓誌彙編 (: Tinajin guji chubanshe, 1992), 180. 75 Suishu 隋書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973), 83.1852. 76 For this please refer to the record in the entry of “composition of histories of previous dynasty” 修前代史 in Tanghui Yao 唐会要 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chuban she,1991), 63.1287–88. At this time, Suishu was still part of a larger text called Wudai shi. 77 Yu Taishan 余太山, “Suishu xiyuzhuan de ruogan wenti” 隋書·西域傳的若干問題, Xinjiang shifandaxue xuebao 15.3 (2004): 50–54. WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 89 developed.78 Furthermore, as Paul Pelliot points out, the given name in this text (Bishibilian) resembles the name of a Khotanese king, Vijayavikrama, which is attested in the Tibetan texts on Khotan.79 The resemblance would have been even greater if one compares the Chinese to the Khotanese original of Vijayavikrama, Visá’ Vikrraṃ. Therefore did see Visá’ as a component of the king’s name, but understood it as a part of the given name of the king rather than his surname. The discrepancy between Pei Ju’s understanding and the later, more popular reading of Yuchi (supposedly deriving from Visá’) as a surname in the Chinese context was noticed by the erudite scholar Du 杜佑 (735–812). In the section on Khotan in his political encyclopedia , essentially copied records from official histories of previous dynasties. After copying these texts, however, he added cautiously “the current king is surnamed Yuchi [emphasis mine].”80 Inscriptional sources, which are unlikely to suffer retrospective editorial tamper- ing, can help us determine when the idea that the Khotanese king had the surname Yuchi came into being. When emperor Taizong passed away in 649, emperor Gaozong who succeeded him ordered that statues of fourteen of the “bar- barian leaders” captured by Taizong be placed near the northern gate of the imperial tomb.81 In 1982, the inscription accompanying the Khotanese king was discovered, and the text reads: []she Xin, the King of [Kho] (□闐王□闍信).82 A similar text found on the statue of Khotanese king in front of the tomb of emperor Gaozong and empress reads: Yuchi Jing, king of Khotan (于闐王尉遲璥).83 These are two definitive pieces of evidence on the Chinese surnames of the Khota- nese king: since they were both found on statues constructed for a royal tomb, the most solemn and official occasion possible, they must have reflected the official usage. Therefore, the king of Khotan initially used Fushe 伏闍as the royal surname, and the transition from Fushe to Yuchi must have happened sometimes between these two inscriptions, namely 649 and 705.84 In this light, we can further examine the records in transmitted texts listed in Table II, all of which, it should be emphasized, were edited long after the eighth century.85 Broadly, this chart indicates a similar shift from Fushe/Fushi to Yuchi, which is in line with what the statue inscriptions reveal. The most interesting fact made clear by this table is the confusion in the transitional period between Fushe, Fushi (another transcription of Visá’) and Yuchi. This confusion happens to both Yuchi Fushe

78 SaitōTatsuya suggests that the surname Wang 王 in Suishu might have been an error of Yu 于, which is possible. See “Kango bunken ni okeru Kōtan ōzoku no seishi - shutsudo bunken to hensan shiryōni yoru saikentō,” 359. 79 Paul Pelliot, Notes on (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1959), 419. 80 Tongdian 通典 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988), 192.5225. 81 資治通鑒 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1956), 199.6269. 82 Zhang Pei 張沛 Zhaoling beishi 昭陵碑石 (Xi’an: Sanqin Chubanshe, 1993), 17. 83 Chen Guocan 陳國燦, “Tang qianling shirenxiang jiqi xianming de yanjiu” 唐乾陵石人像及 其銜名的研究, in , ed., Tujue yu huihu lishi lunwen xuanji 突厥與回鶻歷史論文選集 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987), 395. 84 SaitōTatsuya reaches the same conclusion. See “Kango bunken ni okeru Kōtan ōzoku no seishi - shutsudo bunken to hensan shiryōni yoru saikentō,” 361. 85 Numbers in parenthesis in Table II indicate chapters in which these references occurred in a particular text. 90 X. WEN

TABLE II SURNAMES FOR KHOTANESE KINGS IN TRANSMITTED TEXTS

Year JTS XTS ZZTJ THY CFYG 舊唐書 新唐書 資治通鑑 唐會要 冊府元龜

632 Yuchi Qumi Yuchi Wumi (221a) Yuchi Wumi (970) (198) 648– Fushe Xin Fushe Xin (221a) Fushe Xin Fushe Xin Fushe Xin (426, 999) 649 (3, 4, 40, 198) (199) (73) 661 Fushe X (33) 674– Fushe Fushe Xiong (221a) Fushe Xiong Yuchi Fushe Xiong 692 (5,198)/ (202)/ Yuchi (964) Yu Fushe Yuchi Fushe Fushe Xiong Xiong (964), Fushe Xiong (5) (202, 205) Xiong (999) 725 Yuchi Tiao (126) Yuchi Tiao (212) 728 Yuchi Fushi Yuchi Fushi Zhan Yuchi Fushi (964) (198) (221a) 736 Fushe Da (221a) Yuchi Fushe Da (975) 740 Yuchi (221a) Yuchi Gui (975) 746-755 Yuchi Sheng Yuchi Sheng (110, Yuchi Sheng (962, (144,198) 221a) 973) Unclear Yuchi Guang (21)

Xiong 尉遲伏闍雄 and Yuchi Fushi Zhan 尉遲伏師戰, whose names contain two different renderings of Visá’. The reason might have been that a later editor made educated additions of “Yuchi” to older names, which, unbeknownst to the editor, already contained an earlier form of the same word. In light of this broader trend, the records of the king Qumi 屈密 having a surname Yuchi in as early as 632 becomes very suspicious.86 As quoted above, according to Jiu Tangshu, “the king’s surname is Yuchi, and has the (given) name Qumi.” This king paid tribute to the Tang court in 632; but the exact wording suggests that the tenth century editors of Jiu Tangshu probably added the part of “the king’s surname is Yuchi” to the name of the king retrospectively because at the time, the idea of the Khotanese king having Yuchi as surname was already very well known. Why did this shift from Fushe to Yuchi occur? Our source does not answer this question directly. A natural hypothesis would be that with more knowledge about Khotan, the transcriptions gradually became more accurate. In Table III, I list the reconstructed pronunciations of all five combinations.87

86 The name of this king is recorded as Wumi in both Xin Tangshu and Cefu yuangui 冊府元 龜. The variation must have been resulted from the graphic similarity between the characters wu 屋 and 屈屈. SaitōTatsuya expresses a similar suspicion. See “Kango bunken ni okeru Kōtan ōzoku no seishi - shutsudo bunken to hensan shiryōni yoru saikentō,” 361. 87 For the reconstructions see E. G. Pulleyblank, A Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early , Late Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin (Vancouver: University of British WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 91

TABLE III ́ CHINESE TRANSCRIPTIONS OF VISA’

First Character Pronunciation Second Character Pronunciation

卑 pjiə/pjĭ 示 ʑih 伏 buwk 闍 dʑia 伏 buwk 師 ʂi 尉 ʔut 迟 dri 鬱 ʔut 持 drɨ/dri

Since both 卑 and fu 伏 begin with a labial sound, they are much more plausible candidates for transcribing the “vi” in Visá’. Yuchi is the least favorable option pho- netically, since, as Pulleyblank observes, it is only vaguely similar to Visá’.88 However, none of the other combinations, as much as they resemble Visá’ phoneti- cally, have any meaning in Chinese. They are not known as surnames, and do not convey a particularly auspicious sense. By contrast, Yuchi was by early Tang a well- established “prominent surname” 著姓. In a clan list discovered in Dunhuang, Yuchi is listed as the prominent surname of .89 It is well known that people in the Tang dynasty still attached great significance to the idea of “prominent surname.” As more Khotanese people, especially Khotanese royalties, entered China proper, they might have found the meaningless surname of Fushe or Fushi assigned to them less than savory, and opted for a more favorable choice. There are no good records for the reception of this shift in the Tang, but modern scholars’ confusion of them with the “original” and more prominent Yuchi lineage of Taiyuan seems to indicate a certain degree of success in changing the surname. Significantly, the usage of Yuchi as a surname extended beyond the royal family. One of the most famous Khotanese persons in the Tang dynasty was the painter Yuchi Yiseng 尉遲乙僧 (fl. 7th c.). Zhang Yanyuan 張彥遠 (fl. 9th c.) in his Lidai minghua ji 歷代名畫記 describes him in the following manner:90

Yuchi Yiseng was from the kingdom of Khotan. His father was Bazhina. Yiseng was offered the position of an imperial guard at the early years of the state (i.e. the Tang dynasty), and inherited the title of Prefectural Duke. He was good at painting foreigners and images of the Buddha. People of the time called Bazhina “Yuchi Senior” and Yiseng “Yuchi Junior.”

Columbia Press, 1991). In addition to the four possible transcriptions of Visá’, I also included here a fifth one: Yuchi 鬱持, mentioned in Zhisheng’s 智昇 Kaiyuan shijiaolu 開元釋教錄, T 2154: 55.571a. 88 Pulleyblank, “Chinese and Indo-Europeans,” 18. 89 See Dunhuang manuscript S.2052. See also Rensun 牟潤孫, “Dunhuang Tangxie xing- shilu canjuan kao” 敦煌唐寫姓氏錄殘卷考, Zhushizhai conggao 注史齋叢稿 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987), 178–95; Hanguang 毛漢光, “Dunhuang Tangdai shizupu canjuan zhi - que” 敦煌唐代氏族譜殘卷之商榷，Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yanjiusuo jikan中央研究 院歷史語言研究所集刊 43.2 (1971): 259–76. 90 Chen Gaohua 陳高華, ed., Suitang huajia shiliao 隋唐畫家史料 (Beijing: Wenwu - banshe, 1987), 31. 92 X. WEN

尉遲乙僧，于闐國人。父跋質那。乙僧國初授宿衛官，襲封郡公，善畫外 國及佛像。時人以跋質那謂之大尉遲，乙僧爲小尉遲。

In this record, no explicit reference to either Yuchi Yiseng or his father being members of the royal family is made. Yet he still used Yuchi as a surname. Unfortu- nately, we do not have the Khotanese original of the name of this particular Yuchi Yiseng, so it is difficult to tell if he used any surname in Khotanese. However, Harold Bailey has ingeniously identified the common Khotanese name Irasam̄ ̣ga with Yiseng 乙僧.91 The name Irasam̄ ̣ga, when appearing in Khotanese texts, never accompanies a surname.92 In this case, once again, we see different strategies of naming in the Chinese and Central Asian contexts. As I demonstrated above, the idea that the Khotanese king was surnamed Yuchi began in mid-seventh century. When this view was abandoned is harder to observe, because there is a long hiatus in our sources regarding Khotan between the late eighth and the early tenth centuries. What we do know is that when Khotan drove away the Tibetan overlords and re-established its independence in late ninth and early tenth century, the king Visá’ Saṃbhava had the Chinese name Li Shengtian 李聖天. According to the record in Songshi:93

During the Tianfu reign of (Later) (936–944), the (Khotanese) king Li Shengtian claimed to be the descendent of the Tang royal family, and dis- patched envoys to pay tribute.

晉天福中，其王李聖天自稱唐之宗屬，遣使來貢。

Devotional inscriptions found in Dunhuang caves corroborate this record. In Mogao cave no.61, next to the image of a female patron one finds the inscription of “the Heavenly Princess, the third daughter of the Heavenly Ordained Khotanese Emperor, Li.”94 In cave no.202, another Heavenly Princess of Khotan is also recorded as .95 These texts indicate that, with the demise of the Tang empire, the Khotanese kings evidently abolished the “prominent surname” of Yuchi and picked the even more illustrious “imperial surname” Li of the Tang dynasty. Possibly because of this change, the Khotanese king is known in Tibetan sources as “li rje (king of Li)” and the country of Khotan as “li yul (land of Li).”96 Even after their surnames in Chinese changed to Li, the kings’ names in Khotanese text still began with Visá’. This confirms again that for the Khotanese people at the time, Visá’ was not a surname in the sense that Li was. But more importantly, the continued use of Khotanese-style names while the official surname in Chinese

91 Indo-Scythian Studies: Khotanese Texts, Vol. IV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 80. 92 See, for example, Khotanese Manuscripts, 8, 19, 40. 93 Songshi, 490.14016. 94 Dunhuang yanjiuyuan 敦煌研究院, ed., Dunhuang mogaoku gongyangren tiji 敦煌莫高窟 供養人題記 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1986), 22. 95 Ibid., 93. 96 F. W. Thomas, Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents concerning Chinese Turkestan, Part II: Documents, 190. This proposal is, however, still under dispute. WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 93 changed to Li shows that the new Chinese surname had little impact on their local naming practice. This is not the end of our story. In 1190, almost two centuries after the Karakha- nid conquest of Khotan, a mid-level official serving the Jurchen named Wang Yuande passed away. His epitaph begins, as is the norm, by recounting his ancestry:97

His Lordship had the taboo name Yuande, and the courtesy name Zishan. He was from the Xiangyin county of Hong prefecture. His ancestors originated from a prince of Khotan. Due to the turbulence of the time, the sons and grandsons [of the prince] scattered around other countries. They all used Wang as their surname. The ones in Taiyuan were the most prominent, and His Lordship was their offspring.

公諱元德，字子善，□□弘州襄陰縣人也。其先出于闐王子也。世亂， 子孫散之它國，皆以王為氏。在太原者最顯。公其裔也。

The “turbulence of the time” is likely a reference to the Karakhanid conquest of Khotan, which virtually eliminated the old Khotanese royalties as well as their spon- sored religion of Buddhism. In this case, we see yet another surname - Wang - adopted by the Khotanese people. Wang Yuande was said to have been an offspring of the Taiyuan branch of Wang clan. As is well known, the Taiyuan branch of the surname Wang was, together with Cui 崔 of Boling 博陵 and Li 李 of Zhaojun 趙 郡, among the handful of most prominent surnames in medieval China, and it became famous many centuries before the fall of the Khotanese kingdom. It is there- fore not surprising that Wang Yuande’s Khotanese ancestors who by then lived in China proper should have adopted Wang as their new surname and claimed specifi- cally that they were from Taiyuan. It is interesting to note, nonetheless, that the prin- ciple underlying this choice seemed to have been a combination of the surnames found in Suishu (“Khotanese king’s surname is Wang”) and Yuchi, which, as I men- tioned earlier, was a prominent surname from Taiyuan. Therefore, this last piece of evidence on the Khotanese use of Chinese surnames is in line with the earlier patterns observed above, in the sense that social and political prestige transcended linguistic or cultural concerns as the most important motivation for adopting a new surname. Choosing an appropriate surname in the Chinese context was crucial to many gen- erations of Khotanese people who indigenously did not use surnames, but wished to be presented in a favorable way in the Chinese social context. The Khotanese were not the only Central Asian people who used surnames in this manner in medieval China. Other Central Asian cases show a broadly similar process that differs in specific method. As this process is particularly visible in the context of bilingual texts, I offer the following two examples as points of comparison. A Sogdian-Chinese bilingual epitaph records a certain Shi and his wife Lady Kang, both of whom passed away in 579 and were buried near present-day Xi’an in

97 Hok-lam 陳學霖, “Jinji xunli Wang Yuande muzhiming kaoshi” 金季循吏王元德墓誌 銘考釋, Jinsong shi luncong 金宋史論叢 (Hong : Chinese University Press, 2003), 184. 94 X. WEN

580. Yoshida Yutaka, who published the edition of the Sogdian part of the epitaph, notes that “the names of the couple buried in this tomb, Wirkak and Wiyusi, never appear in the Chinese; while Wirkak is simply called Shi Jun史君 ‘lit. lord Shi’, i.e. a lord originating from the country of Kish, his wife is mentioned as having died on a certain day and is merely referred to as Kang shi 妻康氏 ‘wife from the Kang family.’”98 The names of both these Sogdian figures do not contain surnames in the Sogdian version of the epitaph. Yet, when they appear in the Chinese version, they are referred to only by their surnames, “Lord Shi” and “Lady Kang.” Both Shi and Kang, as noted above, derive from Chinese names of Sogdian countries, Shi corresponding to Kish and Kang to Samarkand. By using two completely differ- ent sets of names in the two parts of the epitaph, the deceased are properly presented in both the Sogdian and the Chinese contexts.99 A further case in another middle-Iranian-speaking people similarly shows the con- structed nature of Chinese surnames for Central and Western Asian peoples in the Tang. Māhwaš was a Sasanian noble woman who fled to China and passed away in the Tang capital Chang’an in 874. She was buried with an epitaph that was inscribed with both Chinese and Pahlavi (Middle Persian). The Chinese part of the inscription addresses her as “Lady Ma the wife of Suliang” 蘇諒妻馬氏.Yet the Pahlavi section begins with “This (is) the tomb of the late Māhwaš, daughter of the late Farroxzād, (son) of Dādweh, from the Sūren̄ (family).” While there are many hypotheses as to why Sūren̄ the name of the family was rendered in Chinese as the name of the husband, it is nonetheless clear that the surnames of the husband and the wife are both invented by transcribing the first syllables of their surname-less non-Chinese names.100

These two bilingual texts, together with the Khotanese story, highlight the invented nature of Chinese surnames used by Central Asian peoples. In most cases, the Chinese surname of a Central Asian person neither derived from, nor impacted upon his or her non-Chinese names. Unlike Chinese surnames used by North Asian peoples that were derived from tribal names and tended to be (at least initially) multisyllabic, most Chinese surnames for Central Asian peoples, such as Shi, Kang, and Ma, were monosyllabic like typical Chinese surnames. Evi- dently, since the Chinese surnames for Central Asian peoples were not restricted

98 Yoshida Yutaka, “The Sogdian version of the new Xi’an inscription,” in Étienne De La Vais- sière and Éric Trombert, eds., Les Sogdiens en Chine (Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 2005), 60. 99 The complex history of the Sogdian use of Chinese names cannot be properly addressed here. Yoshida Yutaka provides a succinct overview of this phenomenon in “Personal Names, Sogdian. In Chinese Sources,” 2006, Encyclopedia Iranica (http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ personal-names-sogdian-1-in-chinese-sources, accessed on May 25, 2016). For the most recent treatment of this subject, see SaitōTatsuya 斉藤達也, “HokuchōZui-Tōshiryōni mieru Sogudo sei no seiritsu ni tsuite” 北朝隋唐史料に見えるソグド姓の成立について, Shigaku zasshi 118.12 (2009): 2106–31. A dictionary of all extant Sogdian names as well as an exhaustive bibliography can be found in Pavel B. Lurje, Personal Names in Sogdian Texts (Vienna: Verlag der Österrei- chischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010). 100 There is a long history of scholarship on this text. For the most recent edition, on which my reading is based, see Hassan Rezai Baghbidi, “New Light on the Middle-Persian-Chinese Bilingual Inscription from Xi’an,” Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti eds., The in History (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2011), 106–15. WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 95 by any existing names in Central Asian languages, these surnames were sometimes made to resemble a common Chinese surname more closely. This distinction between the Central Asian and the North Asian traditions in their adoption of Chinese surnames does not mean that there was not any interaction between the two. In fact, the use of Yuchi (in preference to the transcription “Fushe” without inherent meaning in Chinese) by people from the kingdom of Khotan that I discussed above extensively is precisely an example of such inter- action. This surname Yuchi originally derived from a North Asian tribal name; because of the political importance of these North Asian groups in the early medie- val period, this surname, along with many other surnames of North Asian origins, became by the Tang dynasty a “prominent surname.” Whether the Khotanese people intentionally adopted this prominent yet clearly non-Chinese surname is difficult to know; but to use such a surname does seem to serve as a way of assimilating into the Chinese naming culture while maintaining certain distinctions. In this and many other cases, Chinese surnames for Central Asian peoples served as powerful tools for the shaping and shifting of identities.

CONCLUSION:WHAT’SINASURNAME IN MEDIEVAL CHINA? In this article I discuss the complex process of the creations of Chinese surnames for surname-less Central Asian peoples, and show that while Central Asian peoples were largely recorded as having surnames in Chinese sources, they kept the surname- less naming practice in their local social contexts. In some cases, such as the Khota- nese use of surnames such as Yuchi, Li, and Wang, Central Asian people exhibited their willingness and ability to choose, change, and even fabricate surnames in the Chinese context. But what did this Central Asian use of Chinese surnames mean for the culture of naming in medieval China? As Albert Dien points out in his study on the bestowal of Xianbei surnames to Chinese, the surname-community after the bestowal was “a strange amalgam of Hsien-pei and Chinese institutions: more exactly, a blend of the Altaic pastoral clan, which is inclusive and places minimal value on , with the Chinese lineage, which is usually exclusive and shows little toleration for distance from its common ancestor.”101 In other words, the participation of North Asian peoples in their use of Chinese surnames complicated what a surname-group could mean by incorporating the element of tribal organizations, a fact captured in the biography of famous monk Kuiji 窺基 (632–82) as “yibu weixing” 以部為姓 (using tribes as surnames).102 What I discussed in this paper adds another dimension to the medieval under- standing of surname: the Central Asian tradition. As I have shown above, the Chinese records of Central Asian peoples associated “surnames” to specific countries, often by way of claiming that the kings of the country had these particular surnames. The early Tang records consolidated the tendency of using names of country as surnames, which was already visible in many pre-Tang cases. Contempor- ary observers also commented on this alternative tradition during the Tang dynasty:

101 Albert Dien, “The Bestowal of Surnames under the Western Wei-Northern Chou: A Case of Counter-Acculturation,” T’oung Pao 63 (1977): 144. 102 Song gaosengzhuan 宋高僧傳 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987), 4.63. 96 X. WEN in an epitaph he wrote for a certain An Zhongjing 安忠敬 (661–726) whose ances- tors were from Parthia (Ch. Anxi), 張說 (667–730), the famous early Tang prime minister, explicitly used a phrase that echoes his contemporary Kuiji: “[he, i.e. An Zhongjing] used [the name of] his country as his surname 以國為 姓.”103 Through such practice of using “country as surname,” the country of origin for Central Asian peoples became imprinted in their Chinese names. One finds the clearest case of using countries as surnames in the Sogdiana area where, during the Tang, people hailing from the kingdoms of An, Cao, or Kang were surnamed An, Cao, Kang, etc. A surname Kang, for instance, would immedi- ately signal a relation, real or invented, to the Central Asian state of Samarkand.104 The case study of Khotan in the previous sections adds nuance to our understanding. Although we know that Khotanese peoples used as many as six surnames, there is no evidence for any simultaneous use of two different surnames. What distinguishes the Khotanese case from the Sogdian ones is that there seems to be an overwhelming concentration of the use of surnames on the royal family and specifically the kings themselves. Nonetheless, these kingdoms from Central Asia still exhibited enough similarity in their adoption of Chinese surnames that the characterization by Zhang Yue that they used “country as surname” seems generally applicable. This Central Asian tradition of using Chinese surnames represents a further compli- cation of the meaning of the term surname/xing. All three different traditions of social grouping – North Asian tribes, Central Asian countries, and Chinese patrilineal families - manifested themselves in the Chinese concept of “surname.” It is important to note that many Chinese surnames were originally created from the ancient names of states prior to the Qin unification.

In this sense, they were similar in their origins with the Central Asian surnames in the Tang.105 But that mechanism of deriving surnames from the names of countries ceased to have much significance since the beginning of the imperial period, and during the Tang, it only truly existed in the adoption of Chinese surnames among the non-Chinese. The very same Zhang Yue, who described An Zhongjing as “using country as his surname,” explained to that Chinese surnames originated from country names in the pre-Han times.106 Therefore, the interaction with the North Asian and Central Asian cultures of naming destabilized the Chinese practice of surnaming, which resulted in a more malleable naming culture reminiscent of pre-Qin Chinese practices. The acceptance of such malleability by Zhang Yue and many other Tang people represents a different approach in naming the non-Chinese from the claim by Li

103 Zhang Yue ji jiaozhu 張說集校注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2013), 786. Similarly, in explaining the name Gouzi, 孟康, a scholar of the Wei dynasty in the era, commented that “his ancestor was from the Western Regions (Central Asia), and [he] used [the name of] the country as his surname” 其先西域人, 以國為姓 (this passage is quoted in the commentary of Hu 胡三省 of Zizhi Tongjian). See Zizhi tongjian, 112.3529. 104 In the epitaph for Kang Xu 康續 (d.677), the relation between him and the kingdom of Samarkand (Kangguo 康國) and the king (kangwang 康王) was made explicit. See Rong Xinjiang 榮新江 et al., eds., Cong Sama’ergan Chang’an: Sute ren Zhongguo de wenhua yiji 從撒馬 爾干到長安:粟特人在中國的文化遺迹 (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 2004), 121. 105 Li Xueqin, “Kaogu faxian yu gudai xingshi zhidu.” 106 Xin Tangshu, 125.4404. WHAT’S IN A SURNAME? 97

Xiaobo quoted in the “Introduction” that Xianbei people did not have surnames. The former approach recognizes the social institution of surname/xing as flexible and the non-Chinese names (and persons) as fundamentally recognizable. The latter approach, on the other hand, refuses to grant legitimacy to the non-Chinese social structures by applying surnames to them. The story I present might indicate a general shift from the exclusive approach to the inclusive one. But the exclusive interpretation never entirely disappeared. At the end of his biography of Li Keyong 李克用 (856–908), the Turkic warlord whose son founded the Dynasty (923–36), the Song literatus 歐陽脩 comments on the original surname “Zhuye” of Li Keyong’s family in the following manner:107

Having scrutinized extant records, however, I find such representations [that claim Zhuye as a surname] all erroneous. Barbarians have no surnames, after all; so Zhuye simply designates a tribe.108

然予考于傳記，其說皆非也．夷狄無姓氏，朱邪，部族之號耳 。

Ouyang Xiu’s discussion centers on the acceptable terms used for this group of Turkic people, the Shatuo tribe with the surname Zhuye. His reasoning begins with textual evidence (“[h]aving scrutinized extant records…”), but quickly turns into a categorical claim: “barbarians have no surnames.” Ouyang Xiu is very keen on distinguishing the difference between a tribe and the social institution that a surname should stand for. His comment thus echoes that of Li Xiaobo from the fifth century. One might be tempted to see a clear trajectory of semantic change of the term surname/xing, from a more restricted one before the Tang, to an expanded one during the Tang, and back to a more restricted one in the Song.109 But I would suggest that the tension between a broader understanding of surname and a nar- rower one represented by the comments of Ouyang Xiu persisted during and

107 Xin wudaishi 新五代史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 4.39. 108 Here I largely quote the translation of Richard Davis, see Historical Records of the Five Dynasties (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 39. The only exception is that I do not follow Davis’ translation that renders Yidi as “Northern barbarians.” According to the classic schema, were from the east. Here, Ouyang Xiu is using this term in a more general sense of “barbarians.” This is clear when we compare his record of , where he claims that “compared to other barbarians, [they] have surname” 比佗夷狄有姓氏 (Xin Wudaishi, 74.919). Whereas in the Jiu Wudaishi, the surname of this kingdom is simply recorded (Jiu Wudaishi, 138.1844), in Ouyang Xiu’s text, he feels to need to explain why this group of barbarians appar- ently used surname. This statement shows that for Ouyang Xiu, Goryeo, like Zhuye, is a part of Yidi, and the surname of Goryeo is the exception that proves the rule. Ultimately, I argue that Ouyang Xiu believes barbarians shouldn’t have surnames. The fact that some barbarians clearly had surnames is something that has to be explained away. In the case of Zhuye, Ouyang Xiu argues that it is not a “real” surname, only a name of a tribe; in the case of Goryeo, Ouyang con- cedes that they did have surname, but views it as an exception among the “barbarians.” 109 This would serve to support the thesis of the emergence of proto-nationalism during the Song. See Rolf Trauzettel, “Sung Patriotism as a First Step toward Chinese Nationalism,” in John Winthrop Haeger, ed., Crisis and Prosperity in Sung China (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1975), 199–213; Hoyt Tillman, “Proto-Nationalism in Twelfth-Century China? The Case of Ch’en ,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 39 (1979): 403–28. 98 X. WEN beyond the medieval period. Up till the present day, ethnic minority populations in China encounter similar problems.110 Nonetheless, the inclusive attitude of Zhang Yue towards surnaming seems to have been the norm in medieval China, as most non-Chinese peoples entering social relations with the Chinese adopted surnames without inciting the type of objection raised by Ouyang Xiu. In fact, the Tang regularly used the bestowals of surnames to incorporate non-Chinese people into the Tang government.111 In this way, the readiness to grant surnames to the non-Chinese on the one hand, and the willingness to use Chinese surnames on the other produced a dynamic culture of naming, in which Chinese surnames for non-Chinese people served as a convenient social construct for the needs of both the Chinese and the non-Chinese in medieval China.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR Xin Wen is a Ph.D. candidate under the Committee of Inner Asian and Altaic Studies at Harvard University. His current research goes beyond the traditional dynastic categories of the Tang and the Song, and resituates “China” in the highly connected and interactive world of medieval East Eurasia. Correspondence to: Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, 1730 Cambridge St, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138–4453, USA. Email: [email protected]

110 Äsäd Sulayman, “Hybrid name culture in Xinjiang: problems surrounding Uyghur name/ surname practices and their reform,” in Ildikó Bellér-Hann et al., eds., Situating the between China and Central Asia (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 109. 111 Jonathan Karam Skaff, Sui-Tang China and its Turko-Mongol Neighbors: Culture, Power, and Connections, 580-800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 227–37.