Qin (surname)

Qín (秦)
Language(s)	Chinese
Origin
Language(s)	Old Chinese
Word/Name	State of Qin
Other names
Derivative(s)	Chin

Qín ([tɕʰǐn]) (秦) is a common Chinese surname. "Qin" is the hanyu pinyin romanization of the surname for Mandarin, the common dialect of China; other romanizations of the surname include Chin and Jin in Mandarin, Ceon and Cheun in Cantonese, and Tan in Vietnamese. People with this surname are most commonly found in Henan, Shaanxi, Shandong, Sichuan, Hubei and Hebei.

According to the Shuowen Jiezi, the character for Qin is a compound ideogram which combined two characters: chong 舂 "to pound", and he 禾 "grain". The character originally refers to Qin Valley (秦谷) in Longxi near Tianshui, Gansu and became the name of that area. The area was granted to Feizi, a descendants of Gao Tao, by King Xiao of Zhou as a fief in the 9th century BC, which then grew into the state of Qin. In the 3rd century BC, the state of Qin unified China and became the first imperial dynasty under Qin Shi Huang. After the fall of the dynasty in 206 BC, the descendants of Qin royalty, whose ancestral name was Ying (Chinese: ), was said to have adopted the surname Qin. Many people sought to identify themselves with the Qin long after the fall of the Qin dynasty; in Japan, the Hata clan of Japan claims descent from a branch of the Qin royal family, "Hata" being the native Japanese reading for the character "Qin".

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