shòu 寿

Migration and Distribution (Lack of information) The surname Shou is not among the top 100 surnames in the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. The surname Shou originated from the Ji clan. During the Spring and Autumn Period, the State of Wu was initially very weak. Later, after a man named Shoumeng became the monarch, he governed the country well, strengthened the exchanges between the State of Wu and the Central Plains, and annexed several surrounding small states, gradually making the State of Wu powerful. And Shoumeng himself also proclaimed himself the King of Wu. After that, some members of the royal family of the State of Wu took Shou as their surname, which became the origin of the Shou surname today. There is another theory about the origin of the Shou surname. In ancient times, there was a man named Peng Zu, who was a well - known long - liver and lived for more than 800 years. Some of his descendants took the character "Shou" (meaning longevity) as their surname to commemorate him, thus forming another branch of the Shou surname. To understand the glorious origin of the Shou family, we have to start with Gugong Danfu, the grandfather of King Wen of Zhou. When Gugong Danfu saw the newly - born King Wen of Zhou (Ji Chang) with auspicious signs in the sky, he believed that King Wen of Zhou would surely revitalize the Zhou Dynasty and placed high hopes on him. His eldest son, Taibo, and second - eldest son, Zhongyong, in order to fulfill their father's wish and smoothly pass on the family's foundation to King Wen of Zhou, both tattooed their bodies and cut their hair, and fled to the so - called land of the barbarians in the south, planning to spend their lives silently. Unexpectedly, their noble characters deeply touched the local residents, and more than 1,000 households voluntarily followed them and created another remarkable foundation in the south. For a long time, Taibo has been revered as the first ancestor of the Wu surname in the south. And Zhou Zhang, the ancestor of the Shou family, is a descendant of Zhongyong. The prestigious branch of the Shou family was located in Jingzhao Commandery (now the east of Xi'an, Shaanxi).