It is very interesting to study the history of China. On the issue of historical research, historians recognize that there are two periods of history that are the most difficult to study. One is the Ming and Qing Dynasties, because there are too many historical materials to distinguish. One is before the Qin dynasty, because there are too few reference materials. When Sima Qian wrote Historical Records, the Three Emperors and Five Emperors had become legends. Even the Xia Dynasty was more than 2, years away from Taishigong's time, so there were very few historical materials before the Qin Dynasty.
In Historical Records, the alternation of emperors in Yin and Shang Dynasties is recorded, and those messy names rarely make people look at them again. After the death of Tang, the title of Prince was mentioned for the first time in Historical Records, indicating that the issue of heirs is becoming institutionalized.
Tang Beng, Prince Tai Ding died before standing. This is the first prince recorded in history. But Tai Ding died before he acceded to the throne. Tai Ding's younger brother Wai-c was in the position for three years, and he also died. Another younger brother, Zhong Ren, was emperor for four years, and he also died.
A careful person can find that most of the Shang emperors' names were A, B, D, E, G and Xin. Why is this? In fact, this is for the convenience of future generations to sacrifice after their death. At that time, people used heavenly stems and earthly branches to record the date. After the death of each king in Shang Dynasty, future generations chose one of the ten heavenly stems as the "temple number", such as A, B, C and D of Taijia, Xiaoye, Waibing and Wu Ding.
But it is inevitable that there will be duplication. In order to distinguish, the word difference is added in front of the temple number. For example, in the Shang Dynasty, there were six emperors whose temple number was "A", so they added different words before the temple number, which were called Taijia, Xiaojia, Hejiajia, Wojia, Yangjia and Zujia respectively, so that they would not be repeated.