字派歌

Traditional Chinese clans adopt the use of "generation poems" to identify the "generation seniority" of fellow clan members. Each clan has its own generation poem and members of each generation would take one common character, from the first onwards, for their names. A new generation poem is adopted a few generations before the old poem comes to an end. Each person must know his generation indicator to ensure that proper relationship is observed between clansmen.

Different branches of Huang Qiaoshan's descendants have their own generation poems. In the 15th year of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing dynasty (1889), the descendants of Huang Qiaoshan in the four provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangxi and Zhejiang decided to use a common generation poem. This common generation poem, called the "Zi Pai Ge" 字派歌, consists of 98 characters. The 15th generation descendant of Huang Qiaoshan (131st generation descendant of the Huang Clan) took the 1st character in the poem. Succeeding generations would in turn take one character in the poem. The generation character for the 34th generation of Huang Qiaoshan (My generation) is the 20th character in the poem, "Yan" 衍. The most junior generation in 2000 was the 40th generation, the 26th character in the poem "Shao" 绍. There are still 73 characters left in the poem, which means it can last for another 2,100 years (until AD4100!) before a new generation poem is adopted!

Many traditional Chinese use their generation character as part of their personal name, but for a big clan like Huang, with more than 31 million members worldwide already sharing the same surname, this would pose a big problem, because there would be many people sharing the "same" names, hence many do not use their generation character as part of their personal names.


Erik Huang (Ng Poh Sing)
"Yan" 衍 Character Generation
34th generation descendant of Huang Qiaoshan

Copyright Ng Poh Sing 2003-2005