Kong Surname

Surname Overview

Genealogy of Confucius's Descendants

The Genealogy of the Confucius Family records the descent of Confucius's family across more than eighty generations and over 2,500 years; its 2009 revision included nearly two million people.

Reference: 孔姓家谱_百度百科

Origins

Confucius's Adoption of Kong

Confucius, whose personal name was Qiu and courtesy name Zhongni, is identified as the first to change the ancestral surname Zi to Kong and as the progenitor of the Kong surname.

Reference: 孔姓家谱_百度百科

Historical Records

Early Lineage Records

Sima Qian's “Hereditary House of Confucius” recorded three ancestral generations before Confucius and eleven generations of descendants. In 1085, Kong Zonghan compiled collateral branches into a genealogy and printed it.

Reference: 孔姓家谱_百度百科

Migration and Distribution

Migration and Lineage Boundaries

Kong clanspeople who moved away from Qufu were called migrant households. They spread across more than twenty provinces and generally lived in clan settlements. Within Kong clan usage, descendants of Confucius were distinguished as “inner Kong” from unrelated bearers of the same surname, called “outer Kong.”

Reference: 孔姓家谱_百度百科

Genealogy and Generation Names

Genealogical Revision Rules

The 1684 Genealogy of the Confucius Family formally prescribed a major revision every sixty years and a minor revision every thirty years, scheduled respectively for jiazi and jiawu years.

Reference: 孔姓家谱_百度百科

Fifty-Character Generation Sequence

From the Ming period, the Kong clan developed a unified fifty-character generation sequence governing names from the 56th through the 105th generations. The original 65th-generation character yin was later changed to yan.

Reference: 孔姓家谱_百度百科