弓 Surname · 张姓考略
A bow.
A long arrow.
One name.
The character 張 takes its shape from a bow drawn ready to fire. Its origins reach back more than four thousand years, into the contested terrain of ancient Chinese genealogy. Here is what we know, and what we still argue about.
Before the writing systems we know existed, the surname existed. It was a tribal mark, passed orally, recorded variously, and eventually pinned to characters whose forms still preserve the story.
On bronze inscriptions from the Shang and Zhou, the character for our surname combines two things: a bow (弓) and a length, often read as the long arrow drawn upon it. The Shuowen Jiezi, China's first systematic dictionary, puts it plainly: "to string the bow".
The surname comes, in other words, with a posture: ready, tensioned, focused. Not yet released. Whether or not we draw our names from a literal moment of invention, we draw them from a stance.
Four origin theories
Where did the name come from?
Genealogists have argued this question for more than a thousand years. Here are the four leading accounts, all of them at least partly true.
- I.
Named for the office.
Hui, the fifth son (or grandson) of the Yellow Emperor, served as Gong Zheng, Director of Bows. In the Yellow Emperor's expansionary period, when bow-making was the most advanced technology of the time, the role required specialists. Hui supervised them. He was, the Guangyun tells us, the man "who first made the bowstring and weaved nets". His descendants inherited his name.
Sources · Shiben, Shuowen Jiezi, Guangyun, Yuan He Xing Zuan.
- II.
Named for the fief.
The Lu Shi records that the Yellow Emperor's sons were enfeoffed across some seventy small states, among them the State of Zhang. The Puzhou Prefectural Gazetteer locates this state in present-day Yongji, Shanxi. By this account, Hui took his name from the place he ruled. The two theories are not mutually exclusive: the fief may have been named for him.
Sources · Lu Shi: Records of State Names, Xing Shi Kao Lue, Puzhou Prefectural Gazetteer.
- III.
Named for an ancestor.
A minority view, advanced by the Southern Song historian Zheng Qiao, holds that the name comes from Xie Zhang, also known as Zhang Hou, a senior official in the State of Jin. Modern scholars have shown that Zhang clansfolk lived in the area centuries before him, but his story remains part of the picture.
Sources · Tongzhi, Zuo Zhuan, Xin Tang Shu.
- IV.
Descended from the Ji clan.
The Eastern Han scholar Wang Fu suggested that Zhang Liang, the legendary advisor to Liu Bang, was originally of the Ji clan and changed his name after attempting to assassinate the First Emperor of Qin. The Shi Ji, in fact, makes clear he was Zhang from the start. The theory persists, but the textual evidence points the other way.
Sources · Qianfu Lun (refuted by Shi Ji, Han Shu).
"Whoever strings a bow is said to draw (zhāng); to net birds and beasts is also said to draw."
— Ciyuan
The ancestral homeland
From Qinghe
to everywhere.
For thousands of years, the early Zhangs lived in the ancient Jizhou region — what is today's Hebei and Shanxi, centred on the Qinghe River and the city of Zhangcheng. They fished, farmed, fought. The genealogies record their slow, painful development: blood and fire, bow and arrow.
In the Han dynasty, Zhang Liang's grandson Zhang Dian was appointed prefect of Qinghe Commandery, and the Qinghe branch became the most prominent of the early Zhang lineages. By the Tang, Zhang Wenguan and his brothers — known as the "Ten-Thousand-Stone Zhangs" for the combined rank of their offices — had reached the peak of clan prestige. The Tang court named the Qinghe Zhangs first among the ten "pillars of the state".
From there, the clan spread. By the Ming, the Zhangs had forty-three prominent seats. Today, more than a hundred million people worldwide carry the name. We are scattered. We are also held together — by stories like this one.