Central Asian Participation in the Culture of Naming of Medieval China

Tang Studies ISSN: 0737-5034 (Print) 1759-7633 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ytng20 What's in a Surname? Central Asian Participation in the Culture of Naming of Medieval China Xin Wen To cite this article: Xin 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. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ytng20 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 dynasty, witnessed unprecedented cultural 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 languages, in particular Khotanese, in conjunction with transmitted Chinese records, this article highlights the distinctive Central Asian tradition in the use of Chinese surname. I argue that, unlike the better-studied North Asian tradition, in which surnames were derived from usually multisyllabic tribal names, 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 participation in the practice of surnaming did not introduce a large number of new surnames, but it did profoundly influence what a surname could mean in medieval China. KEYWORDS: Central Asia, Medieval China, Surname, Khotan, cross-cultural identity INTRODUCTION: A curious exchange of diplomatic jesting occurred in 450 between an official from the southern Liu-Song (420–479) and an envoy of the Northern Wei (386–534) in front of the besieged city of Pengcheng.1 The Northern Wei army was approaching Pengcheng in retaliation for the Song’s unsuccessful northward campaign earlier in the same year. The seneschal in charge at Pengcheng, Zhang Chang 張暢 (408–457), I began the research for this article for my MA thesis at Peking University under the advice of Professor Rong Xinjiang. I read many of the Khotanese texts discussed here with Professor Oktor Skjærvø and Zhang Zhan, 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 Chen, Du Heng, 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 incident, 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’ang 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 (xing 姓) of the envoy.2 To this question the envoy responded: “I am Xianbei 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 emperor 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, he was able to find in his city someone who did. As it turned out, the envoy allegedly “without a surname” was actually Li Xiaobo 李孝伯 (d. 459), hailing from none other than the Li clan of Longxi 隴西, one of the most illustrious aristocratic families in Chinese history. The prestige of this family 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 anonymity, 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 patrilineality was so closely tied to name 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 clans 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 (Beijing: 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 "Han" 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 Han Chinese” 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 Tang dynasty 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, Sanskrit cınā ) contemporary to the Tang. As the relation between the Tang and Central Asia 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 affiliation within it. Even in the waning years of the Tang dynasty (618–907), when medieval aristocratic families are believed to have been in decline, a leading surname such as Cui from Qinghe or Lu 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 long 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 nature of Chinese surnames themselves.13 These works underscore 7 Xin Tangshu 新唐書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 172.5205–6.

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