The surnames of the four masters and apprentices are all determined according to their identities, and depending on the different artistic conceptions, they may be pronounced in Chinese characters or have their own meanings. Sun Wukong's surname was Sun, which means "狲狲" in regular Chinese. Tang Sanzang's real name was Chen Xuanzang, because it was the emperor's younger brother who gave him the surname Tang. Sha Wujing lived in Liusha River and named the river as his surname. These surnames all exist in the Encyclopedia of Hundred Family Surnames. The image of Zhu Bajie is a pig. According to the naming rules of many of them, it should be possible to choose the image and the surname is Zhu.
But the author of "Journey to the West" is Wu Chengen of the Ming Dynasty, Sanzang and Sanzang of the Tang Dynasty. Why is the name of my brother not a person's surname? Why is it that he is named after Zhu Bajie? Let me first analyze that Sun Wukong was named Sun Wukong because he had already reached the realm of tranquility and received instructions from his master immediately. The same is true for Sha Wujing. Although he committed a crime in the immortal world, he corrected his mistakes and was able to transform, and he became Sha Wujing. Therefore, according to the traditional Chinese culture of "the king of heaven and earth, the master and the master", Patriarch Bodhi taught first, and Master Xuanzang introduced him to the back of the Samana, so he respected Bodhi first, and his surname was Sun. For Zhu Bajie, the same principle applies to the above.
Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva has already named him Wu Neng. Tang Xuanzang only changed his original name from Pig Steel Bristles to Pig Bajie, which means the same metaphor as a human traveler. Moreover, the surname Pig is also due to its own origin, whether it is a physical parent or not. It was called Bajie because Bajie violated the Eight Precepts, so Tang Xuanzang expected him to take this as a precept. Zhu Bajie's name is because his karma is relatively heavy, so he must be named after the eight Buddhist precepts so that he can change his past, greed, anger, ignorance, pride, and doubt, and wait for the Buddhist precepts to be used before he can overcome them. Transform him, otherwise, he may violate the precepts and cannot be transformed. This is the name derived from the enlightenment of Guanyin Bodhisattva.
Although the pig surname is extremely rare nowadays, it may not have been that rare in the era when the story "Journey to the West" was formed. After all, the story of Western games took shape earlier. The story of "Stone Monkey Seeking Buddhist Scriptures from the West" had already appeared in the late Song Dynasty. Its sculptures still exist, and the character "Zhu Bajie" already existed at that time. By the Yuan Dynasty, with the story of the Yuan drama "Journey to the West", the character "Zhu Bajie" had already won the hearts of the people. At that time, the number of people with the pig surname must have been larger than in the Ming Dynasty and contemporary times. Even if the surname was very common, there was no shortage of people with the pig surname.