{"id":73338,"date":"2026-08-01T09:04:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T01:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=73338"},"modified":"2026-08-01T09:04:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T01:04:05","slug":"reflections-as-jolie-pitt-kids-change-their-surname-why-the-ancient-chinese-did-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=73338","title":{"rendered":"Reflections | As Jolie-Pitt kids change their surname, why the ancient Chinese did the same"},"content":{"rendered":"


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I am not one to follow celebrity gossip, but the recent decision by several of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie\u2019s children to drop their father\u2019s surname caught my attention. Following the couple\u2019s bitter separation, some of their children have chosen to remove \u201cPitt\u201d from their original hyphenated surname, \u201cJolie-Pitt\u201d.<\/p>\n

For people living in imperial China, changing one\u2019s surname was rarely a casual decision. Unlike Europeans and many others, married Chinese women traditionally retain their own family names. The Chinese surname is an important marker of identity and community, but there have always been circumstances in which it could be altered.<\/p>\n

In imperial times, political upheaval was one of the most compelling reasons. When a dynasty was overthrown, members of the imperial family and their descendants could find themselves in danger, or simply wished to distance themselves from a fallen regime. A new surname could protect them from persecution or help conceal their identity.<\/p>\n

After the fall of the Qing dynasty<\/span> in 1912, for example, many members of the imperial clan changed their Manchu surname, Aisin Gioro, to the Han Chinese surname Jin, meaning \u201cgold\u201d.<\/div>\n
Name taboos provided another reason. In traditional China, certain characters could not be used because they appeared in, or sounded like, the personal names of emperors or other revered historical figures. The personal name of Emperor Ming of the Eastern Han dynasty<\/span> was Liu Zhuang. During his reign, from AD57 to AD75, people whose surname was Zhuang (\u201csolemn\u201d) were ordered to adopt another family name.<\/div>\n
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An illustration of Emperor Ming from 1609. Photo: Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Emperors sometimes bestowed new surnames on individuals as an extraordinary mark of favour. Zheng Chenggong (1624-62), celebrated for his military achievements in and around Taiwan, was granted the imperial surname Zhu (\u201cred\u201d) by the Ming dynasty<\/span> court. Koxinga, the name by which he is known in the West, was probably a Dutch rendering of kok-seng-ya<\/em>, the Hokkien-Minnan pronunciation of \u201cLord of the Imperial Surname\u201d.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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I am not one to follow celebrity gossip, but the recent decision by several of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie\u2019s children to drop their father\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[5434,3876,107,27506,232,5433,27507],"class_list":["post-73338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-ancient","tag-change","tag-chinese","tag-joliepitt","tag-kids","tag-reflections","tag-surname","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}