About the Surname Liu

People often incorrectly spelt Liu as Lui. There is no such Chinese family name.

Condensed from an article by Quanzhong Song, Institute for Heritage Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Daily Overseas Edition, Saturday, March 22, 1997. Edited by Pengfei Liu

Liu is the fourth biggest family name in China. Liu, Li, Wang, Zhang and Chen are called the five-big surnames. The population of the Liu's in the world is about 60 million, 5.4% of the population of China.

In history, Liu has two features:
1) a large number of emperors
2) multiple sources of generation

Dynasties under Liu were: West Han, East Han, Shu Han, Former Zhao, Liu Song, Latter Han, South Han and North Han. There were 66 Liu emperors, and their sovereignty spanned about 650 years. West Han Dynasty was established by Bang Liu in 220 B.C., and lasted 12 emperors for about 210 years.

Xiu Liu re-established the Han Dynasty, called East Han in the year 25 A.D. East Han had also 12 emperors, spanning 190 years.

Liu's population comes from 5 sources:
1) Lei Liu, who was the descendant of the second emperor in Chinese history, Rao. He raised his family in the County of Lu, Henan Province, which is also the hometown of the famous monk Tang in the Tang Dynasty.

2) Liu Yi, a place in the Henan Province. The King of State Zhou of the Spring-Autumn States (about 2000 B.C.) entitled his youngest son as Duke Liu. His generations were then surnamed Liu.

3) Awarded by emperors surnamed Liu. Ministers and officials whose suggestions were favorably taken by the emperors were awarded the surname of the royal family.

4) A family name in a minority group akin to Korea was renamed to Liu by an emperor of the Wei Dynasty.

5) Marriage. The princess, daughter of the first Liu emperor in the Han Dynasty Bang Liu was married to a King of Mongolia. According to the nation's tradition, royal family members followed the mother's surname, and many of his descendants after his daughter have surname Liu.

For a long time, Liu's has been spread out all over the world. In Singapore, there are three Liu's associations among others. The Liu's General Association was established in 1937. Its mission statement was to get acquaintance and help each other, to work cooperatively and to promote charity and public welfare of the society.

There are many Liu's clans. Which one do we come from?

Originated from Town of East Hekou (River Mouth), Rongcheng City, Shandong Province, China,  our clan of Liu follows a 7-rank cycle, i.e., DE, BAO, ZHONG, HOU, CHUAN, JIA, YUAN. They mean morality, preciousness, loyalty, broad-mindedness/forgiveness, bequeath, home/state/federation, distantness, respectively. My father was in the rank of BAO, I am in the rank of ZHONG and Ming is the rank of HOU. Liu and Li cover 95% of population in Town of East Hekou and Liu occupies about 40%. The Town of West Hekou, the neighbor,  has about 90% population in Liu.

Many Chinese used their clan names in the middle, i.e., my father's name was Liu Bao-Quan (meaning fountain of treasure), my brother's is Liu Zhong-Liang  (meaning loyal official). When these names are westernized, Liu goes last. In fact in Chinese, surname goes first.

Unlike the cities in China in which people's surnames are a mixture of variety, in the Town of East Hekou, the same as most of other country side of China, rank in clan is the basis of the form of address. For example, when I was ten years old I went Hekou and talked to an old man, he first asked my surname and my rank in the clan then he called me grandpa because his rank in the clan is CHUAN which is two generations junior.  When eating at a banquet in the town, seating order was also arranged by the seniority of the clan. This is how it was.

The ranks of our clan of Liu  are shown below: