section_path: Names
section_name: Names
paragraph_text: Names
  
  Modern Chinese sources often give the personal name of Qin Shi Huang as Ying Zheng, with Yíng (嬴) taken as the surname and Zheng (政) the given name. However, in ancient China, the naming convention differed, and the clan name Zhao (趙), the place where he was born and raised, may be used as the surname. Unlike modern Chinese names, the nobility of ancient China had two distinct surnames: the ancestral name (姓) comprised a larger group descended from a prominent ancestor, usually said to have lived during the time of the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, and the clan name (氏) comprised a smaller group that showed a branch's current fief or recent title. The ancient practice was to list men's names separately— Sima Qian 's "Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin" introduces him as "given the name Zheng and the surname Zhao " —or to combine the clan surname with the personal name: Sima's account of Chu describes the sixteenth year of the reign of King Kaolie as "the time when Zhao Zheng was enthroned as King of Qin". However, since modern Chinese surnames (despite usually descending from clan names) use the same character as the old ancestral names, it is much more common in modern Chinese sources to see the emperor's personal name written as Ying Zheng, using the ancestral name of the House of Ying.
  
  The rulers of the state of Qin had styled themselves kings from the time of King Huiwen in 325 BC. Upon his ascension, Zheng became known as the King of Qin or King Zheng of Qin. This title made him the nominal equal of the rulers of Shang and Zhou, the last of whose kings had been deposed by King Zhaoxiang of Qin in 256 BC.
  
  Following the surrender of Qi in 221 BC, King Zheng reunited all of the lands of the former Kingdom of Zhou. Rather than maintain his rank as king, however, he created a new title of huángdì (emperor) for himself. This new title combined two titles— huáng of the mythical Three Sovereigns (三皇, Sān huáng) and the dì of the legendary Five Emperors (五帝, Wŭ Dì) of Chinese prehistory. The title was intended to appropriate some of the prestige of the Yellow Emperor, whose cult was popular in the later Warring States period and who was considered to be a founder of the Chinese people. King Zheng chose the new regnal name of First Emperor (Shǐ Huángdì, Wade-Giles Shih Huang-ti) on the understanding that his successors would be successively titled the "Second Emperor", "Third Emperor", and so on through the generations. (In fact, the scheme lasted only as long as his immediate heir, the Second Emperor.) The new title carried religious overtones. For that reason, sinologists starting with Peter A. Boodberg or Edward H. Schafer —sometimes translate it as "thearch" and the First Emperor as the First Thearch.
  
  The First Emperor intended that his realm would remain intact through the ages but, following its overthrow and replacement by Han after his death, it became customary to prefix his title with Qin. Thus:
  
  As early as Sima Qian, it was common to shorten the resulting four-character Qin Shi Huangdi to 秦始皇, variously transcribed as Qin Shihuang or Qin Shi Huang.
  
  Following his elevation as emperor, both Zheng's personal name 政 and possibly its homophone 正 became taboo. The First Emperor also arrogated the first-person pronoun 朕 for his exclusive use, and in 212 BC began calling himself The Immortal (真人, Others were to address him as "Your Majesty" (陛下, in person and "Your Highness" (上) in writing.