The Bo Family#

Surname: Bo, pronounced as bó

Distribution of the Bo Family#

• Yanmen Commandery: During the Warring States period, King Wuling of Zhao established Yanmen Commandery, which was continued by the Qin and Han dynasties. This corresponds to the area around Dai County in present-day Shanxi Province.
• Qiao Commandery: During the Jian'an era of the Eastern Han dynasty, a part of Pei Commandery was separated to form Qiao Commandery, with its administrative center in Qiao County (now Bozhou, Anhui Province). This area lies between Anhui and Henan provinces.

Origins of the Bo Surname#

The Bo surname has several origins:

1. Derived from the Jiang surname: According to "Qianfu Lun," the Bo surname originated from descendants of the Jiang family. In ancient times, there was a state called Bo (located southeast of Cao County, Shandong Province, also known as Hao), which was a fiefdom of the descendants of the Yan Emperor. The descendants of this state adopted the name of their state as their surname.
2. Derived from the Zi surname: During the Spring and Autumn period, a high-ranking official from the State of Song was granted a fief in Bo City (around present-day Shangqiu, Henan Province). His descendants took the name of the fief as their surname.
3. Derived from the descendants of King Tang of Shang: This branch of the Bo surname also originated from a fiefdom granted to the descendants of King Tang of Shang.
4. Derived from the Xianbei people: During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Xianbei tribe of Bo Xi adopted this surname after sinicization.
5. Derived from the Manchu people: Some members of the Manchu people adopted the Bo surname after sinicization.
6. Also found among the Qiang people in history.
7. Derived from other surnames: For example, according to "Wanxing Tongpu," the Bo surname originated from Bo Gu, a vassal of the Shang dynasty, who later had his surname simplified to just "Bo."
8. According to the "Wei Shu," during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there was a compound surname Bo Xi in the northern regions of the Northern Wei dynasty, which was later changed to the single Chinese character surname "Bo" after moving to the Central Plains.

Ancestral Figures: The founder of the Bo surname is considered to be either King Tang of Shang or Bo Gong. Scholars have confirmed that the Bo family descended from King Tang of Shang. In ancient times, Bo was also known as Bo City, located southeast of Cao County, Shandong Province, and was a fiefdom of the descendants of the Yan Emperor. The influential Bo clan resided in Yanmen Commandery, which is now Dai County, Shanxi Province. Therefore, King Tang of Shang is revered as the ancestor of the Bo family.

Migration and Spread: The Bo family had multiple origins and was already distributed in the areas of present-day Shangqiu and Qi County (the capital of the State of Wei) during the Pre-Qin period. Ancient scholars noted that "Bo" and "Bo" referred to the same place; Bo City was located about a hundred miles from Shangqiu. During the Eastern Han dynasty, Bo became the administrative center of Qiao Commandery, making it the most prominent area for the Bo family.

Later Developments:

• In the mid-to-late Warring States period, as the States of Song and Wei were conquered, some Bo descendants migrated to the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions.
• Liu Bang, the founder of the Han dynasty, had a wife named Bo Ji who was from present-day Suzhou, Jiangsu. Her father had an affair with a princess of the former State of Wei, resulting in Bo Ji. Bo Ji was later honored as the Empress Dowager by Emperor Wen, and her brother was granted a noble title for his contributions.
• During the Han and Wei dynasties, a branch of the Bo family moved to northern central Shanxi and merged with another Bo clan from the Northern Wei dynasty, becoming a prominent clan in that region. This area was formerly part of Yanmen Commandery, which is why the Bo family later adopted Yanmen as their ancestral title.
• From the Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Bo family spread to northern provinces such as Shandong, Hebei, and Henan, as well as southern provinces like Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi.
• During the Song and Yuan dynasties, the Bo family was also found in Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, and Hunan.
• In the early Ming dynasty, Bo descendants from Shanxi were relocated to Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Henan as part of the Hongdong migration.
• During the Qing dynasty, some Bo people from northern central Shanxi migrated to the northeastern provinces.
• In the mid-20th century, some Bo people who followed the Nationalist Party to Taiwan settled there.

Today, the Bo family is widely distributed across China, with a significant presence in Shanxi. The Bo surname does not rank among the top 100 most common surnames in China, either on the mainland or in Taiwan.

Clan Titles (Tanghao): The clan title "Gewu Tang" (meaning "to understand the principles of all things") originates from Bo Yu of the Ming dynasty, who invented various weapons and wrote the book "Gewu Cedi Lun." Later generations used the first two characters of his book as their clan title.

Generational Naming Systems:

• Different branches of the Bo family have their own unique generational naming systems, such as:
  • Tianjin Ninghe Bo family: "Hong Lian (Gui) Ke Li"
  • Tianjin Ninghe Bo family: "Da (Dou) Yu Wen Jin Zhong Zi Hong (Hong) Fu