In ancient times, the Yellow Emperor gave twelve surnames to twelve outstanding sons. One of them was Ren, and the Ren Shi clan later flourished and was divided into ten tribes, each with a surname, including Zhang. Another surnamed Zhang is a descendant of Emperor Yan. One of the descendants of Emperor Yan is Jiang Ziya, the founding hero of the Zhou Dynasty. Jiang Ziya's descendants were blocked, and Yan State was established, which is now Zhangqiu County. Later, the descendants of Yan Guojun took Zhang as their surname.

According to folklore, Xuanyuan Huangdi has always had 25 sons, among whom 12 takes Germany as the surname, and there are countless different surnames from the original 12 "basic" surname.

12 Among the basic surnames, there is a surname Ren. According to Zuo Zhuan, Xie, Zhang, Xue, Shu, Lu, Zhong, Quan, Bi, Guo and other ten surnames all came from the original surname Ren.

Therefore, Zhang is of course a descendant of the Yellow Emperor 5000 years ago, and it is an ancient surname with a long history.