Posted 2016/9/13
A Compilation of Surnames in the Era of Yuanhe (元和姓纂) is a special book studying the genealogical trees and surnames in the Tang Dynasty written by the genealogist Lin Bao in the 7th year of Yuanhe's Reign (812) of the Tang Dynasty.
A Compilation of Surnames in the Era of Yuanhe records in detail the genealogical trees and surnames, with many quotations from ancient books and thus maintaining some segments of the lost books. Headed with the surname of the imperial family Li, the book arranges its surnames by the four tones of Chinese characters. In the Tang Dynasty, ancestry was excessively highlighted and the genealogy was often attached to famous ancestry. Each surname was headed with the famous family, and then the origin was investigated together with the genealogical tree illustrated.
A Compilation of Surnames in the Era of Yuanhe took data from private genealogy and thus the origin of the surnames was not always true. The original book has lost for long and it was discovered from the Yongle Encyclopedia when the Imperial Collection of Four Classic Chinese Books was compiled in the Qianlong's Reign of the Qing Dynasty. The lost part was made up with reference to the Comment on Surname History written by Deng Mingshi of the Song Dynasty and the book was reclassified into 18 volumes.
