"The Meng Family Genealogy" mentioned: "The senior generations are divided into seniority and inferiority, and the names are determined according to the names of seniority and youth."
1. The origin of the Meng family tree
The Meng family in China originated from the Duke of Lu in the Spring and Autumn Period. The ancestor of the surname Meng was Qingfu, the concubine of Duke Huan of Lu. Because Qingfu was the eldest among the concubines, and the character "Meng" represented the greatest among the brothers; and to avoid the crime of regicide, Qingfu's descendants were renamed the Meng-sun family. Later, Meng Sun's family was simplified to Meng's family.
The descendants of the Mencius family were named according to their seniority since the Ming Dynasty. The four sage lines of "Confucius, Mencius, Yan, and Zeng" all use the same seniority. The Meng clan members abide by clan rules and pay great attention to the relationship between superiors and subordinates.
From Mencius to Meng Ning, most of the forty-five generations of the Meng family were passed down alone. From the fiftieth generation onwards, the Meng family began to use the same character in naming their brothers of the same generation to indicate their generational lineage. Counting from the time when Meng Xiwen, the fifty-sixth generation grandson of Mencius, was awarded the hereditary Doctor of the Five Classics of the Hanlin Academy during the Jingtai period of the Ming Dynasty, Mencius' descendants began to confer worldly positions.
2. The development of the Meng family tree
From the fifty-sixth generation to the sixty-fifth generation during the Jingtai period of the Ming Dynasty, "Xi, Yan, Gong, Yan, Cheng, Hong, Wen, The ten descendants of Zhen, Shang, and Yin;
The sixty-sixth to seventy-fifth generations of the late Ming Dynasty were named "Xing, Yu, Chuan, Ji, Guang, Zhao, Xian, Qing, Fan, and Xiang" Ten-character generations;
During the 76th to 85th dynasties of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty, the ten-character generations of "Ling, De, Wei, Chui, You, Qin, Shao, Nian, Xian, and Yang" were established ;
In the seventy-sixth to one hundred and fifth dynasties of modern times, "Jian, Dao, Dun, An, Ding, Mao, Xiu, Zhao, Yi, Chang, Yu, Wen, Huan, Jing, Rui, Yong, Xi, Shi, Xu, Chang" are the twenty-character generations.
In this way, after hundreds of years of development, the Meng family has reached 105 generations with the word "Chang".
Extended information
The Meng family genealogy is a book in the form of a genealogy that records the genealogy of the Meng family and the deeds of important figures. It requires the tribesmen to strictly abide by the generation of names, otherwise they will not be included in the genealogy and will only be treated as "Wai Meng".
The Meng family genealogy requires the clan members to strictly abide by the generation naming, otherwise it will not be included in the genealogy and will only be treated as "Outer Meng". Since the Ming Dynasty, the Meng clan has followed clan rules and paid great attention to the relationship between superiors and inferiors.
The "Mencius Family Genealogy" clearly records that "the divisions are divided into eleven and the other households are divided into twenty." The descendants of the Meng family in these "eleven factions" and "twenty households" are the direct descendants of Mencius. . To this day, the Meng clan also attaches great importance to the seniority of their "household", and they can sort out their lineage and position themselves as if they were family treasures.
Reference materials: Meng family tree Baidu Encyclopedia