Aisin Gioro

Aisin Gioro
Chinese: 爱新觉罗氏
Later Jin dynasty
Royal house
Country  China  Manchukuo
Estates Summer Palace (Beijing)
Old Summer Palace (Beijing)
Mukden Palace (Shenyang)
Chengde Mountain Resort (Chengde)
Parent house Qing dynasty
Titles
Style(s) "His/Her Imperial Majesty"
Founded 1616 (1616)
Founder Nurhaci
Final ruler Puyi
Current head Jin Yuzhang[1]
Deposition 1912 (1912)
Ethnicity Manchu
Aisin Gioro
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 愛新覺羅
Simplified Chinese 爱新觉罗
Manchu name
Manchu script

Aisin Gioro is the name of the imperial clan of Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty. The House of Aisin Gioro ruled China from 1644 until the Xinhai Revolution of 1911-12, which established a republican government in its place. The word aisin means gold in the Manchu language, and "gioro" is the name of the Aisin Gioro's ancestral home in present-day Yilan, Heilongjiang Province. In Manchu custom, families are identified first by their hala (哈拉), i.e. their family or clan name, and then by mukūn (穆昆), the more detailed classification, typically referring to individual families. In the case of Aisin Gioro, Aisin is the mukūn, and Gioro is the hala. Other members of the Gioro clan include Irgen Gioro (伊爾根覺羅), Susu Gioro (舒舒覺羅) and Sirin Gioro (西林覺羅).

The Jin dynasty (jin means gold in Chinese) of the Jurchens, ancestors of the Manchus, was known as aisin gurun, and the Qing dynasty was initially named () amaga aisin gurun, or Later Jin dynasty. Since the fall of the Qing Empire, a number of members of the family have changed their surnames to Jin (Chinese: 金) since it has the same meaning as "Aisin". For example, Puyi's younger brother changed his name from Aisin Gioro Puren (愛新覺羅溥任) to Jin Youzhi (金友之) and his children in turn adopt Jin as their family name.

Family generation names

Before the founding of the Qing dynasty, the naming of children in the Aisin Gioro clan was essentially arbitrary and followed no particular rules. The Manchu people originally did not use generation names before they moved into China proper; prior to the Shunzhi era, children of the imperial clan were given only a Manchu name, for example Dorgon.[2][3]

After taking control of China, however, the family gradually incorporated Han Chinese naming conventions.[4][5] During the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, all of the emperor's sons were to be named with a generation prefix preceding the given name. There were three characters initially used, Cheng (承), Bao (保) and Chang (長), before finally settling on Yin (胤) over a decade into the Kangxi era. The generation prefix of the Yongzheng Emperor's sons switched from Fu (福) to Hong (弘). Following the Yongzheng Emperor, the Qianlong Emperor decreed that all subsequent male offspring would have a generation prefix placed in their name according to a "generation poem", for which he composed the first four characters, Yong Mian Yi Zai (永綿奕載). Moreover, direct descendants of the emperor will often share a similar radical or meaning in the final character. A common radical was shared in the second character of the first name of princes who were in line to the throne, however, princes who were not in line to the throne did not necessarily share the radical in their name.[6] In one case, the Yongzheng Emperor changed the generation code of his brothers as a way of keeping his own name unique. Such practices apparently ceased to exist after the Daoguang era.

List of generation prefixes

The latest additions to the list were the last 12 characters, taken from a "generation poem" composed by Puyi in 1938.

Order Generation prefix Radical code Examples
Yongzheng Emperor Yin (胤; yìn), Yun (允; yǔn) Shi (示; shì) Yinzhen, Yunreng, Yunsi, Yunxiang, Yunti
Qianlong Emperor Hong (弘; hóng) Ri (日; rì) Hongli, Hongzhou
Jiaqing Emperor Yong (永/顒; yǒng) Yu (玉; yù) Yongyan, Yongqi
Daoguang Emperor Mian (綿; mián), Min (旻; mǐn) Xin (心; xīn) Minning, Mianyu
Xianfeng Emperor Yi (奕; yì) Yan (言; yán) Yizhu, Yicong, Yixin, Yixuan, Yikuang
Tongzhi Emperor / Guangxu Emperor Zai (載; zài) Shui (水; shuǐ) Zaichun, Zaitian, Zaifeng, Zaitao, Zaiyi, Zaixun
Xuantong Emperor Pu (溥; pǔ) Ren (人; rén) Puyi, Pujie, Puren, Puru
N/A Yu (毓; yù) Shan (山; shān) Yuzhan, Yuyan
Heng (恆; héng) Jin (金; jīn) Hengxu
Qi (啟; qǐ) Qicong, Qigong
Dao (焘; dào)
Kai (闓; kǎi)
Zeng (增; zēng)
Qi (祺; qí)
Jing (敬; jìng)
Zhi (志; zhì)
Kai (開; kāi)
Rui (瑞; ruì)
Xi (錫; xī)
Ying (英; yīng)
Yuan (源; yuán)
Sheng (盛; shèng)
Zheng (正; zhèng)
Zhao (兆; zhào)
Mao (懋; mào)
Xiang (祥; xiáng)

Origins

The Aisin Gioro clan, as a Manchu clan, claimed descent from the Jurchen people, who founded the Jin dynasty nearly five centuries earlier under the Wanyan clan. However, the Aisin Gioro and Wanyan clans are unrelated.

The Aisin Gioro claimed that their progenitor, Bukūri Yongšon (布庫里雍順), was conceived from a virgin birth. According to the legend, three heavenly maidens, namely Enggulen (恩古倫), Jenggulen (正古倫) and Fekulen (佛庫倫), were bathing at a lake called Bulhūri Omo near the Changbai Mountains. A magpie dropped a piece of red fruit near Fekulen, who ate it. She then became pregnant with Bukūri Yongšon

The Aisin Gioro also claimed descent from Mentemu of the Odoli clan, who served as chieftains of the Jianzhou Jurchens.

Expansion under Nurhaci and Huangtaiji

Under Nurhaci and his son Huangtaiji, the Aisin Gioro clan of the Jianzhou tribe won hegemony among the rival Jurchen tribes of the northeast, then through warfare and alliances extended its control into Inner Mongolia. Nurhachi created large, permanent civil-military units called "banners" to replace the small hunting groups used in his early campaigns. A banner was composed of smaller companies; it included some 7,500 warriors and their households, including slaves, under the command of a chieftain. Each banner was identified by a coloured flag that was yellow, white, blue, or red, either plain or with a border design. Originally there were four, then eight, Manchu banners; new banners were created as the Manchu conquered new regions, and eventually there were Manchu, Mongol, and Chinese banners, eight for each ethnic group. By 1648, less than one-sixth of the bannermen were actually of Manchu ancestry. The Manchu conquest of the Ming dynasty was thus achieved with a multiethnic army led by Manchu nobles and Han Chinese generals. Han Chinese soldiers were organised into the Army of the Green Standard, which became a sort of imperial constabulary force posted throughout China and on the frontiers.

Intermarriage and political alliances

The Qing dynasty emperors arranged marriages between Aisin-Gioro noblewomen and outsiders to create political marriage alliances. During the Manchu conquest of the Ming Empire, the Manchu rulers offered to marry their princesses to Han Chinese military officers who served the Ming Empire as a means of inducing these officers into surrendering or defecting to their side. Aisin-Gioro princesses were also married to Mongol princes, for the purpose of forming alliances between the Manchus and Mongol tribes.[7]

One Han Chinese general, Li Yongfang, was bribed by the Manchus into defecting by being married to a Aisin-Gioro noblewoman, and being given a position in the banners. Many more Han Chinese abandoned their posts and joined the Manchus.[8] There were over 1,000 marriages between Manchu women and Han Chinese men in 1632 – thanks to an idea by Yoto, a nephew of the Manchu emperor Huangtaiji.[9] Huangtaiji believed that intermarriage between Han Chinese and Manchus could help to eliminate ethnic conflicts in areas already occupied by the Manchus, as well as help the Han Chinese forget their ancestral roots more easily.[10]

Manchu noblewomen were also married to Han Chinese men who surrendered or defected to the Manchu side.[11] The sons of the Han Chinese generals Sun Sike, Geng Jimao, Shang Kexi and Wu Sangui, married women from the Aisin Gioro clan.[12] Geng Jimao's sons, Geng Jingzhong and Geng Zhaozhong, served in the court of the Shunzhi Emperor and married Hooge's daughter and Abatai's granddaughter respectively.[13]

Genetics

Haplogroup C3c has been identified as a possible marker of the Aisin Gioro and is found in ten different ethnic minorities in northern China, but completely absent from Han Chinese.[14][15][16][17]

Notable Aisin-Gioros

Emperors

Iron-cap princes and their descendants

According to Qing dynasty imperial tradition, the sons of princes do not automatically inherit their fathers' titles in the same rank as their fathers. For example, Yongqi held the title "Prince Rong of the First Rank", but when his title was passed on to his son, Mianyi, it became "Prince Rong of the Second Rank". In other words, the title gets diminished by one rank as it is passed down to each subsequent generation, but generally to no lower than the rank of feng'en fuguo gong (second class imperial duke). However, there were 12 princes who were awarded the shi xi wang ti ("iron-cap") privilege, which meant that their titles can be passed on to subsequent generations without the downgrading effect.

The 12 "iron-cap" princely peerages are listed as follows. Some of them were renamed at different points in time, hence they had multiple names.

Prominent political figures

20th century – present

Images

See also

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Aisin Gioro.
  1. ↑ Heir to China's throne celebrates a modest life, The Age, November 27, 2004
  2. ↑ Edward J. M. Rhoads (2001). Manchus & Han: ethnic relations and political power in late Qing and early republican China, 1861-1928 (reprint, illustrated ed.). University of Washington Press. p. 55. ISBN 0-295-98040-0. In the beginning, among the first couple of generations, Manchu men had polysyllabic personal names (e.g., Nurhaci) that in their native language may have been meaningful but when transliterated by sound into Chinese characters were gibberish; furthermore, they did not arrange their personal names in generational order, as Han often did.
  3. ↑ Mark C. Elliott (2001). The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (illustrated, reprint ed.). Stanford University Press. p. 243. Manchu naming practices also differed when it came to naming the children of the same generation. Chinese practice, at least among elites, typically called for all children of the same lineage and same generation to share the same first character of the given name. All the brothers and cousins (or sisters and cousins) of the same generation would be identified by this character (sometimes called beifen yongzi), which greatly simplified the determination of re
  4. ↑ Mark C. Elliott (2001). The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (illustrated, reprint ed.). Stanford University Press. p. 244. lationships within the linage. The Manchus were not so careful about this sort of thing... The Chinese practice of using the same first character for the given names of children of same generation was initially adopted during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor. The children of Kangxi all sported the same prefix-character, yin (written "in" in Manchu), and every generation afterward was marked by the same initial character (or, in Manchu, the same initial sounds) in the given name. While some Manchu families followed suit, many others did not, or did so inconsistently: for example, the brother of an early-eighteenth-century general, Erentei, was named Torio, while the Xi'an general Cangseli named his son Cangyung, using the same sound, "cang" ("chang" in Chinese), for his and the following generation.
  5. ↑ Edward J. M. Rhoads (2001). Manchus & Han: ethnic relations and political power in late Qing and early republican China, 1861-1928 (reprint, illustrated ed.). University of Washington Press. p. 55. With the imperial clan itself taking the lead, Manchus started to shorten their personal names to disyllabic ones (e.g., Yinzhen, for the future Yongzheng emperor), to adopt names that were meaningful and felicitous in Chinese, and to assign names on a generaltional basis. By the time of the Guangxu emperor (r. 1875-1908), all the males of his generation in the imperial clan had the character zai in their personal names, such as Zaitian (the emperor), Zaifeng (1883-1952; his brother and future regent), and Zaizhen (1876-1948; his cousin). By contrast, the previous generation had used the character yi (e.g., Yikuang, Yixin, and Yihuan), while the following generation used the character pu (e.g., the future Xuantong emperor Puyi [1906-67] and his brother Pujie [1907-94]).
  6. ↑ Edward J. M. Rhoads (2001). Manchus & Han: ethnic relations and political power in late Qing and early republican China, 1861-1928 (reprint, illustrated ed.). University of Washington Press. p. 56. ISBN 0-295-98040-0. In a further refinement of the generational principle, the second character in the personal name of each person in the direct line of succession contained a radical that distinguished these name from all others of their generation in the imperial clan. Thus, the tian character in "Zaiyian" and the feng character in "Zaifeng" shared the "water" radical; hiweverm the zhen in "Zaizhen" (written with the "hand" radical) did not, because as the son of Yikuang (Prince Qing), Zaizhen was not in the direct line of succession.
  7. ↑ Anne Walthall (2008). Anne Walthall, ed. Servants of the dynasty: palace women in world history. Volume 7 of The California world history library (illustrated ed.). University of California Press. p. 148. Whereas the emperor and princes chose wives or concubines from the banner population through the drafts, imperial daughters were married to Mongol princes, Manchu aristocrats, or, on some occasions, Chinese high officials... To win the support and cooperation of Ming generals in Liaodong, Nurhaci gave them Aisin Gioro women as wives. In 1618, before he attacked Fushun city, he promised the Ming general defending the city a woman from the Aisin Gioro clan in marriage if he surrendered. After the general surrendered, Nurhaci gave him one of his granddaughters. Later the general joined the Chinese banner.
  8. ↑ Frederic E. Wakeman (1977). The fall of imperial China (illustrated, reprint ed.). Simon and Schuster. p. 79. ISBN 0-02-933680-5. Chinese elements had joined the Manchu armies as early as 1618 when the Ming commander Li Yung-fang surrendered at Fu-shun. Li was made a banner general, was given gifts of slaves and serfs, and was betrothed to a young woman of the Aisin Gioro clan. Although Li's surrender at the time was exceptional, his integration into the Manchu elite was only the first of many such defections by border generals and their subordinates, who shaved their heads and accepted Manchu customs. It was upon these prisoners, then, that Abahai relied to form new military units to fight their former master, the Ming Emperor.
  9. ↑ Anne Walthall (2008). Anne Walthall, ed. Servants of the dynasty: palace women in world history. Volume 7 of The California world history library (illustrated ed.). University of California Press. p. 148. In 1632, Hongtaiji accepted the suggestion of Prince Yoto, his nephew, and assigned one thousand Manchu women to surrendered Chinese officials and generals for them to marry. He also classified these Chinese into groups by rank and gave them wives accordingly. "First-rank officials were given Manchu princes' daughters as wives; second rank officials were given Manchu ministers' daughters as wives."
  10. ↑ Anne Walthall (2008). Anne Walthall, ed. Servants of the dynasty: palace women in world history. Volume 7 of The California world history library (illustrated ed.). isbn=: University of California Press. p. 148. Hongtaiji believed that only through intermarrige between Chinese and Manchus would he be able to eliminate ethnic conflicts in the areas he conquered; and "since the Chinese generals and Manchu women lived together and ate together, it would help these surrendered generals to forget their motherland"
  11. ↑ Anne Walthall (2008). Anne Walthall, ed. Servants of the dynasty: palace women in world history. Volume 7 of The California world history library (illustrated ed.). isbn=: University of California Press. p. 148. During their first years in China, the Manchu rulers continued to give imperial daughters to Chinese high officials. These included the sons of the Three Feudatories—the Ming defectors rewarded with large and almost autonomous fiefs in the south.
  12. ↑ eds. Watson, Ebrey 1991, pp. 179-180.
  13. ↑ Wakeman 1986, p. 1017.
  14. ↑ "Recent Spread of a Y-Chromosomal Lineage in Northern China and Mongolia". Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. 2015-09-28. Retrieved 2015-11-26.
  15. ↑
  16. ↑ "Recent Spread of a Y-Chromosomal Lineage in Northern China and Mongolia". Sciencedirect.com. Retrieved 2015-11-26.
  17. ↑ Archived November 25, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
  18. ↑ 曹長青 (2009-12-14). 金溥聰是不是溥儀的堂弟？ [King Pu-tsung is not the cousin of Henry Puyi?] (in Chinese). Taiwan: Liberty Times.
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