Chi / Ch'ih
Descendants of the Shang-era worthy Chi Ren adopted their ancestor's name as their surname, and most Chi lineages honor Chi Ren as the founding ancestor of the surname.
Other branches descend from Fan Xu, whose courtesy name was Zichi, or arose when the Yuchi, Anchi, and Manchu Chijia surnames were changed to Chi.
The earliest person surnamed Chi recorded in historical works is Chi Zhaoping, a woman from Pingyuan in the Western Han, indicating that the surname was already present in the Shandong area during the Qin-Han period.
The principal ancestral commandery of the Chi surname is Taiyuan, and its hall names include Taiyuan and Weixin.
The surname's early centers may have been around Qufu and Anyang. During the Sui and Tang it spread to Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan, and Shandong; after the late Tang it moved south into Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Hubei, and during the Ming and Qing it also spread to Liaodong and the three northeastern provinces.
Chi Fengxiang, from Linqu in Shandong, earned the jinshi degree in the twenty-third year of the Jiajing reign. He served as a bureau secretary in the Ministry of Revenue and later as a director and vice minister in the Ministry of War, and authored Sishu Shuo, Qugang Ji, and Yijing Shuo.
Start with ancestral counties, villages, personal names and dates. Record genealogy titles, volumes, editions and catalog identifiers. A shared surname does not prove a shared lineage; compare branch records.
These catalogs or datasets attest written names, not every origin or lineage claim on this page.
This page includes automatically organized material. Check the references and original family documents.
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