Hundred Family Surnames

An unknown author compiled the book during the Song dynasty (960–1279).

They served as instructional books for children,[5] becoming the almost universal introductory literary texts for students (almost exclusively boys) from elite backgrounds and even for a number of ordinary villagers.

Since Chinese did not use an alphabet, this was an effective, though time-consuming, way of giving a crash course in character-recognition before going on to understanding texts and writing characters.

According to Song dynasty scholar Wang Mingqing (王明清), the first four surnames listed represent the most important families in the empire at the time:[7] The next four, Zhou 周, Wu 吳, Zheng 鄭, and Wang 王, were the surnames of the other wives of Qian Chu, the last king of Wuyue.

In 2013 the Fuxi Institution compiled a ranking of the 400 most common surnames in China.

Hundred Family Surnames poem written in Chinese characters and Phagspa script , from Shilin Guangji written by Chen Yuanjing in the Yuan dynasty