Later on, his descendant Xiao Biao (萧彪) moved to Lanling (兰陵), now Yicheng in Shandong province,[5] due to political problems during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han.

During the Yuan dynasty, members of the Xiao family moved from Jiangxi to Meizhou and Dabu in Guangdong province.

In the early Ming dynasty, the population in North and Central China was declining due to wars.

People were moved from Shanxi province, which had been less affected by the wars, to the war-torn, less populated area of North and Central China.

The Shanxi Xiao family were part of this group of "immigrants under the tree" (在大槐树下集中移民), which were moved to the modern provinces of Henan, Shandong, Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Shanxi and other places.

According to historical materials, from the beginning of the reign of the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty, many members of the Xiao family moved to Sichuan.

In Taiwan, they lived primarily in the cities and counties of Changhua, Chiayi, Taipei, Kaohsiung and Taoyuan.

The World Congress of Xiao people[clarify] was held in Chaoyang, Guangdong province, China in 2010.

[citation needed] At the end of the Qing dynasty, Chinese started to move to other countries to work there.

Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan maintain traditional Chinese characters and therefore write 蕭.

In mainland China and Singapore, where simplified Chinese is used, most linguistics agree the surname should be written as 萧.

People have long been writing the surname 肖 for simplicity, but the form was considered informal and not used in formal texts.

When the second-round simplification was rescinded in 1984, some people restored their surname in legal documents to the traditional writing form, but some others did not.

All Liao people reverted to using 廖 after the rescission, because the modification is no longer considered a valid character and cannot be typed into the computer.

However, 肖, which has other meanings, is still valid so some people have continued to use this form including in legal documents.