yī 伊

Migration and Distribution The Yi surname originated in the Yishui River Basin in Henan. In the early days, they were active in the Central Plains region. During the Han and Tang dynasties, there were traces of the Yi clan in present-day Shandong and Shanxi, with Chenliu County (present-day Kaifeng, Henan) as their prominent ancestral seat. Since the Song Dynasty, the Yi clan has been distributed in present-day Shandong, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong, Yunnan, and the Northeast region. Although the population of the Yi surname is not large today, it is widely distributed, especially in Hebei. Currently, the number of people with the Yi surname does not rank among the top 300 in the country.