Elen Martinusen He

Some characteristic forenames: Chinese Wei, Bin, Li, Ming, Ping, Yi, Jian, Min, Feng, Lei, Qing, Xin, Yan, Tian, Chang, Neng, Sha, Yiping, You. Vietnamese Hao, Huan, Cong, Lan, Hai, Hieu, Ngan, Nu, Pu, Quan.

Chinese: Mandarin form of the surname 何, which meant ‘ask’ or ‘what?’ in ancient Chinese: (i) from the surname Han (韓), the name of a state during the Warring States period. In 230 BC the state of Han was annihilated by the state of Qin. Some of the descendants of Han Wang An (韓王安, 'An, King of Han'), the last king of Han, fled to the area around the Yangtze and Huai (淮) rivers, where the surname Han (韓) had a similar pronunciation to that of the Chinese character He (何) in the local dialects, so they adopted the surname He (何) as a surname.(ii) from one of the 'Nine Sogdian Surnames’, in Chinese also known as ‘nine surnames of Zhaowu’, because their ancestors came from Zhaowu, an ancient city in present-day Gansu province in northwestern China. During the Sui and Tang dynasties (581–987 AD ) there were nine Sogdian states in Central Asia, one of which was called He (何) in Chinese. Between 649 and 655 AD , these states submitted to Emperor Gaozong of Tang (628–683 AD ). The people from this state and their descendants acquired the surname He.(iii) from the name of He Miao (何苗), who changed his original surname Zhu (朱) to He (何) during the Western Han dynasty (206 BC –25 AD ). (iv) For some families, this surname is traced back to Suo Ming (鎖銘), the son of an ambassador (Suo Nan, 鎖南) from Tibet in the 12th century AD . Suo Ming was appointed to a post in Hezhou (in present-day Gansu province) and endowed with the surname He by Hongwu Emperor (Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming dynasty) in 1371 AD .(v) a surname of the Tuyuhun (吐谷渾) ethnic group, originating in the Wudai Period (907–960 AD ).

Chinese: Mandarin form of the surname 賀, meaning ‘celebrate, congratulate’ in Chinese: (i) a semantic variant of Qing (慶) (see Qing 1). In the Eastern Han dynasty (25– 220 AD ), a descendant of the Qing family, Qing Chun (慶純), a well-known official, changed his surname to He (賀), which has the same meaning as Qing (meaning ‘celebrate’), because his surname Qing happened to be the personal name of Liu Qing (刘慶), the father of Emperor An of Han (94–125 AD ), which was a taboo that Qing Chun wanted to avoid. (ii) shortened form of disyllabic surnames such as He Lan (賀蘭), He Lai (賀賴), He Dun (賀敦), which were surnames from the Xianbei ethnic group, shortened to He through cultural fusion with the Han people during South and North Dynasties (420–589 AD ). This surname is common in Henan province.