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The ''Hundred Family Surnames'' () is a classic Chinese text composed of common Chinese surnames. The book was composed in the early Song Dynasty.〔K. S. Tom. () (1989). Echoes from Old China: Life, Legends and Lore of the Middle Kingdom. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1285-9.〕 It originally contained 411 surnames, and was later expanded to 504.〔 Of these, 444 are single-character surnames, and 60 are double-character surnames. About 800 names have been derived from the original ones.〔Chen, Janey. () (1992). A Practical English-Chinese Pronouncing Dictionary. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 0-8048-1877-0〕 In the dynasties following the Song, the ''Three Character Classic'', the ''Hundred Family Surnames'', and ''Thousand Character Classic'' came to be known as ''San Bai Qian'' (Three, Hundred, Thousand), from the first character in their titles. They were the almost universal introductory literary texts for students, almost exclusively boys, from elite backgrounds and even for a number of ordinary villagers. Each was available in many versions, printed cheaply, and available to all since they did not become superseded. When a student had memorized all three, he had a knowledge of roughly 2,000 characters. Since Chinese did not use an alphabet, this was an effective, though time consuming, way of giving a "crash course" in character recognition before going on to understanding texts and writing characters. The ''Hundred Family Surnames'' was translated into Manchu as (Wylie: Pe giya sing, Möllendorff: Be giya sing). ==Form== The work is a rhyming poem in lines of eight characters. The surnames are not listed in order of commonality. According to Song dynasty scholar Wang Mingqing (王明清), the first four surnames listed represent the most important families in the empire at the time: *1st: Zhao () is the surname of the Song Dynasty emperors. *2nd: Qian () is the surname of the kings of Wuyue. *3rd: Sun () is the surname of the queen of Wuyue. *4th: Li () is the surname of the kings of Southern Tang. The next four, Zhou 周, Wu 吳, Zheng 鄭, and Wang 王, were the surnames of the other wives of Qian Chu, the last king of Wuyue. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hundred Family Surnames」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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