The Shen family first originated in today's Henan and Anhui provinces. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the Shen clan who fled to Chu State served as Zuo Sima in Chu, and this official was hereditary. They lived in Yeyi (today's Ye County, Henan Province) for a long time.
In the pre-Qin period, people with the surname Shen were mainly active in Henan and Hubei. They also had footprints in Shanxi, Anhui, Shaanxi, Gansu, Sichuan and other places.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Shen surname entered Zhejiang, and their descendants prospered. Until the Sui Dynasty, the Shen surname in Wukang, Zhejiang developed into a famous and noble family. During the two waves of immigrants from the Central Plains to the south during the Tang Dynasty, one of the surnames Shen entered Fujian, and then immigrated to Guangdong. In the late Ming Dynasty, the surname Shen first entered Taiwan.
During the Song Dynasty, there were approximately 330,000 people with the surname Shen, accounting for approximately 0.43% of the country's population. It was the 54th surname in the Song Dynasty. The province with the largest number of people with the surname Shen is Zhejiang, accounting for about 33% of the total population with the surname Shen in the country.
The distribution of the Shen surname in the country is mainly concentrated in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Henan. These four provinces account for about 72% of the total population of the Shen surname in the country, followed by Hunan, Anhui, and Hebei. There are 19 more people with the surname Shen in the three provinces. The whole country has formed two major gathering areas of Shen surnames in the north and south of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Henan.
Extended information
The growth rate of the population surnamed Shen in the 1000 years since the Song Dynasty has been in a ^-shaped trend. The distribution across the country is now mainly concentrated in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, accounting for about 36% of the total population with the surname Shen, followed by Shanghai, Anhui, Henan, Guangdong, Hubei, Guizhou, and Shandong. These seven provinces and cities account for another 37%. Jiangsu is the largest province with the Shen surname today, and is home to 20% of the total population with the Shen surname. The whole country has formed a distribution pattern with Jiangsu and Zhejiang as the center and scattering outward.
During the past 600 years, the degree and direction of population flow with the Shen surname were different from those during the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties. The migration back to the north, central and south was very strong, which was greater than the migration from north to southeast and south.
In Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian and Taiwan, southeastern Shandong, southeastern corner of Henan, eastern Hubei, most of Jiangxi, eastern Guangdong, most of Yunnan and Guizhou, northwest Guangxi, eastern Heilongjiang, northeastern Inner Mongolia, Shenyang The ratio of the surname to the local people is more than 0.39, and the central area reaches more than 2.3. The area covered by the above-mentioned areas accounts for about 19% of the total land area, and about 66.3% of the people with the surname Shen live there.
In most of Guangdong and Guangxi, Hunan, southwestern Jiangxi, northern Guizhou, most of Sichuan, central Hubei, southern Chongqing, eastern Henan, central Shandong, eastern Qinghai, central Gansu, eastern Liaoning, and the central and western section of Heilongjiang Province , eastern Inner Mongolia.
The proportion of the Shen surname in the local population is generally between 0.26 and 0.39. Its coverage area accounts for about 18.4% of the total land area, and more than 20.3% of the Shen surnamed people live there.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Shen Surname