In the history of China, emperors had posthumous title, temple number and year number, but ordinary appellations had a historical evolution. Generally speaking, the temple name is commonly used for those who are called Zong, and posthumous title is commonly used for those who are called Emperor. The founding emperor is generally called "Zu", and later emperors are generally called Zong (there are exceptions, such as Ming).

Posthumous title was often used before the Tang Dynasty, such as Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and Wei Wendi; Temple names were commonly used in Tang, Five Dynasties, Song and Yuan Dynasties, such as Emperor Taizong, Song Renzong and Yuan Shizu. There were many titles in Ming and Qing dynasties, such as Qianlong and Yongzheng. There are also reasons for this evolution.

Because of the frequent changes of the year number, it is not conducive to being an ordinary title of the emperor. Therefore, in this period of history, posthumous title was the most commonly used title for emperors. After the Ming and Qing dynasties, the year number began to be fixed. Generally, an emperor only uses one year number (exception).

The year number is usually determined by the new emperor when he ascended the throne, which is very common in life. Therefore, titles are often used to refer to emperors in history, such as Emperor Yongle, Emperor Zhengde, Emperor Kangxi, yongzheng emperor and Emperor Qianlong. Of course, they also have temple numbers and posthumous title, but because of their complexity (posthumous title) or lack of personality (temple numbers), they all changed to year numbers.

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Theoretically speaking, a non-founding emperor can only be called "Zong". For example, emperors who made great contributions, such as Emperor Taizong, were not only the actual founders of the Tang Dynasty, but also initiated the rule of Zhenguan. But because the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty was nominally Li Yuan, he could not be called the ancestor. But there are three exceptions, one is Kublai Khan in Yuan Shizu, the other is Judy in Ming Dynasty, and the third is Qing Taizu, Qing Shizu and Qing Saizu in Qing Dynasty.

None of the three emperors was the founder of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing emperor Nurhachi established the post-Jin regime, but he did not become an emperor. His son, Huang taiji, succeeded Khan for ten years before changing the post-Jin regime to the Qing Dynasty, and imitated the laws and regulations of the Ming Dynasty to become the emperor.

Baidu encyclopedia-temple number

Baidu encyclopedia-year number

Baidu Encyclopedia-posthumous title