Song Family History

Korean: written 송 in Chinese characters 宋 denoting the Song kingdom. There are actually two Chinese characters for this surname covering sixteen clans. The smaller clan is the only clan to use another one of the two Chinese characters and it has only one or two households. The remaining clans all descend from a common ancestor Song Chu-ŭn (宋 株殷) who seems to have migrated from Tang China to Korea sometime during the Shilla period. Sixty percent of the Songs live in southern Korea.

Korean (Sŏng): written 성 in Chinese characters 成 meaning ‘success’. There are actually two Chinese characters for the surname Sŏng but one of them is registered for just a single household. Only the common Sŏng clan, the Ch’angnyŏng clan, is treated here. This was founded by Sŏng In-bo (成 仁輔) just prior to the establishment of the Koryŏ kingdom in 918.

According to legend, Sŏng In-bo died in Seoul. His son set out to transport his father's body back to Ch’angnyŏng but, the weather being poor, he decided to stop for the night and finish the journey in the morning. When he awoke, he discovered that his father's body was missing. Upon investigation, he found that a tiger had dragged the body to a secluded grave site in the mountains near Ch’angnyŏng.

It was there that the son buried his father and established his home. Many of the members of the Sŏng clan today live in the Ch’angnyŏng area of Kyŏngsang province. Compare Sung. Chinese: Mandarin form and Cantonese variant of the surname 宋: (i) from Song (宋), the name of a state (located in Shangqiu in Henan province) granted to Wei Ziqi by King Wu of Zhou (c. 1087–1043 BC).

After the state was annexed by the state of Qi (located mainly in present-day Shandong province) in 286 BC, some descendants of the royal family from the state adopted 宋 the name of the state as their surname. (ii) said to be traced back to the personal name Song (宋), personal name of a prince in the state of Zheng during the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BC). Chinese: Mandarin form of the surname 松 meaning ‘pine tree’ in Chinese: It was said that Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BC), the first emperor of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC), once took shelter from the rain under a giant pine tree on his way back to the palace after a ceremony.