There were surnames as early as the primitive clan period. Surnames originated from the female line and surnames originated from the male line. "Surname means lineage, surname means official position, household registration and occupation", and now surnames are only used to mean family. The explanation of surnames in Shuowen is: "people are born" and "women are born with surnames." Therefore, the oldest surnames such as Ji, Jiang and Yao are all related to women. In matriarchal society, descendants of the same matriarchal line cannot marry. In order to distinguish different marriage groups, they have surnames. Some major surnames are over 4000 years old. With the constant appearance of the same surname, surnames came into being in order to distinguish the status and origin of the family, and the earliest clear surname records began in the Zhou Dynasty. The original meaning of surnames is "support" and "qi", and the purpose is to distinguish the origin of future generations. The same surname can be divided into many different surnames. The Yellow Emperor created twelve surnames for his twenty-five sons. The history of Tao Tang was later sealed in Liu Di, and his descendants took Liu Wei's surname.