Surname of Yang

Though in written English my surname would be YEO, but in the chinese root, i am in deed still belongs to YANG root. Way back in my early teenage years, i would always wanted to find out how does my surname derives. And being educated in a Malay medium, i would not know how to read nor write in Chinese language, less said even in my mother toungue, which is suppose to be Hokkien and Hakka, i would struggle to learn all these Chinese languages. Enough said of those, come back to the story of YANG, the story begins here....

The YANG character is a derivative from the word for "Sunlight". However a search in any dictionary reveals it to be a type of tree such as a poplar or a willow tree. The character is composed of two parts, the part means wood referring to a type of tree in ancient myth used to measure the height of the sun thereby establishing the calendar. The second part of the right hand side of the character is a graphic description of "the sun rising over Tanggu" (the place in ancient myth where the sun rose). In Tanggu there was a type of large lizard in the water, now known as a dragon, also called a thunder-beast. That is why Tanggu was represented by the character yi [second character in the 'large lizard' cited above], pronounced yang, and its master was Fu Xi (the founding ancestor of mankind in ancient myth, aka Xi He), and its heavenly almanac was called the Book of Changes (Yijing) (the yi character is the same as the right-hand component of the lizard character and the Yang family character).

Yang can also be the phonetic translation of a very rare Chinese family name character for Goat or Sheep.

The surname Yang is one of the posterity for the Yellow Emperor and the sixth most common family name of the Chinese people. The surname Yang has two main origins, one from the name of a state and the other from the name of a fiet. Both originate from the surname Ji, the one used by the direct descendents of the Yellow Emperor - the earliest ancestor of the Chinese people.

Historical records of the surname Yang taking name from the state can be found in writings of Zheng Qiao in the Southern Song Dynasty. The records said the youngest son of King Xuan of the Zhou Dynasty was conferred the title of Marquis Yang. The state Yang was later eliminated by state Jin. Extirpates from state Yang then assumed the name of their state as their surname.

Another origin of the surname Yang is from the name of a fief. Shu Yu, the third son of King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty, was conferred in Jin. When Duke Wu of state Jin succeeded the throne, King Li of the Zhou Dynasty conferred the right of taxation of land Yang (now in southeast of HongDong of Shanxi province) to him. Duke Wu son of BoQiao was conferred the title Marquis Yang. So began the history of the surname Yang, which took the name of a fief.

After the Northern Wei Dynasty many ethnic minorities changed their surname to Yang and the surname Yang became a large surname for multiple nationalities.

The Yang clan was founded by Yang Boqiao the second son of prince Jinwu in the Springs and Autumns Period (c. 8th to 5th Centuries BC) who was enfeoffed in the Yang kingdom.