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August 24, 2005

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After A Millennium, Enough's Enough

Amusing story today in the Times about a village clan in central Henan province that wanted to change their name, and was finally successful. Their name had been 'gou', which sounds a lot like the Chinese word for dog. Apparently a thousand years ago, for reasons shrouded in the mists of time, a high official surnamed Jing wanted to ingratiate himself with an emperor of the same surname, and so he changed his own last name to something much more humble.

The result has been humiliation for over a thousand years as his descendants have had to endure the vilest taunts and barking at them on the street.

 posted by HK Dave on 08.24.05 at 07:40 AM in the




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Comments:

Interesting post.

"......a high official surnamed JING wanted to ingratiate himself with an emperor of the same surname" is not entirely accurate. The surname of the ruler, Shi Jingtang, was SHI.

 posted by: Letters from China on 08.24.05 at 10:15 AM [permalink]




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