Editing Chinese surname (section)

=== ''Xing'' ===
[[File:Radical nuu xing.png|thumb|The character for ''xing'' with the female radical 女 in red]]
The ancient ''xing'' were surnames held by the [[Chinese nobility|noble clans]]. They generally contain a "female" ({{zh|c=女|p=nǚ}}) [[Radical (Chinese characters)|radical]], for example [[Ji Clan|Ji]] ({{linktext|姬}}), [[Jiang (surname)|Jiang]] ({{linktext|姜}}), [[Yao (surname)|Yao]] ({{linktext|姚}}) and [[Yíng]] ({{linktext|嬴}}). This is taken as evidence that they originated from [[matriarchal]] societies based on [[Women in ancient and imperial China#Neolithic|maternal lineages]]. The character for ''xing'' itself is composed of a female radical and the character for "give birth" (生, ''shēng'').<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ku1Sr-q9KNUC&pg=PA140 |title=Warp and Weft, Chinese Language and Culture |first= Keekok |last=Lee |pages=140–141|publisher=Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency, LLC |date= 2008|isbn=978-1606932476 }}</ref>  ''Xing'' is believed to have been originally transmitted through women of noble birth, while noble men have ''shi''.<ref name=du />

Scholars such as [[Edwin G. Pulleyblank]], however, are unconvinced by the matriarchy theory of Chinese surnames due to a lack of independent evidence. An alternative hypothesis has been proposed, suggesting that the use of female radical in ''xing'' may have arisen from the clan [[exogamy]] system used during the [[Zhou dynasty]] (the words ''xing'' and ''shi'' also did not exist in the Shang dynasty [[oracle bones]]). In ancient times, people of the same ''xing'' were not permitted to marry each other and a woman married into an aristocratic clan needed to be of a different name.<ref name=pulleyblank /> Based on observation of the evolution of characters in oracular scripture from the [[Shang dynasty]] through the [[Zhou dynasty|Zhou]]: the 女 radical seems to appear during the Zhou period next to Shang [[Chinese character|sinograms]] indicating a clan or a tribe. This combination seems to designate specifically a female and could mean "lady of such or such clan". The structure of the ''xing'' sinogram could reflect the fact that in the royal court of Zhou, at least in the beginning, only females (wives married into the Zhou family from other clans) were called by their birth clan name, while the men were usually designated by their title or fief.

While people of the same ''xing'' were not permitted to marry each other, those with the same ''shi'' can. By the Han dynasty when everyone had ''xing'' and the surname was transmitted paternally, the practice continued, but it had changed to marriage between families of men on the paternal side being prohibited, but not on the maternal side.<ref name=du />