Gu surname is a surname with a long history, which was first formed in the late summer and early Shang Dynasty and left home (now Fanxian County, Henan Province). The other was formed in Huiji (now Suzhou, Jiangsu) in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty.
According to the Song Dynasty's Genealogy, "Gu, surnamed Earl, was a vassal state of Xia and Shang Dynasties. There is an old city twenty-eight miles southeast of Fan County, which is also his land, and his descendants take the country as their surname. In addition, the genealogy of Gu said: Sun Minjun, the King of Yue Gou Jian's seven generations, shook, the Han Dynasty sealed Dong Ou, shook off, sealed his son as Gu, and lived in Huiji in the early Han Dynasty, which was also Gu. "
According to historical records, during the Xia Dynasty, Kunwu descendants were sealed in Guguo (now Fanxian County, Henan Province), and the nearby Bakungwu and Pengwei countries were the important pillars of the Xia Dynasty in the lower reaches of the Yellow River and the barrier of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In the late summer and early Shang Dynasty, Gu was destroyed by Shang Tang. After the national subjugation, Gu's descendants scattered all over the country, taking the name of the country as their surname. From then on, China began to have Gu's family.
The other, Gu, comes from a distant descendant. At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, Sun Yao, the descendant of Gou Jian, the King of Yue, was named Dongyi (now Yongjia, Zhejiang) for helping the princes to destroy Qin. Later, Yao also betrothed his son to Huiji, called Gu. Later, the descendants of Gu took the "Gu" of his fief as their surname and formed a caring resident.
These two Gu surnames, one originated in the north and the other in the south, were later called "South Gu" and "North Gu". Today, when people surnamed Gu talk about their origins, they still say "looking south" and "looking north".
After the ancient surname was obtained, the development of "Beigu" was not as good as that of "Nangu", and Nangu soon became the most popular surname in Huiji District. During the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, they were called Huiji four surnames together with Lu, Zhu and Zhang. Because Gu's surname mainly originated from and grew up in Huiji, Huiji became one of the counties with Gu's name. Later, the family moved westward to Wuling (now Changde, Hunan), which developed rapidly, so Wuling became another county of the family. From the Three Kingdoms to the Tang Dynasty, Gu has always been one of the four surnames in Jiangdong. After the Tang Dynasty, due to various reasons, the Gu family continued to spread to the north and south. In the Ming Dynasty, it was not only distributed in Shandong, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Fujian, Guangdong and Sichuan, but also lived in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei and Inner Mongolia in the north.
However, throughout the history of the Gu family, its development and reproduction center has always been in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, so most of the historical celebrities of the Gu family are southerners, especially in Jiangsu. For example, Gu Yong, the prime minister of Wu in the Three Kingdoms, supported Gurong, the leader of the gentry in the south of Si Marui and the grandson of Gu Yong in the Western Jin Dynasty; Gu Kaizhi, painter of the Eastern Jin Dynasty; Gu, a literary exegesis expert in the Southern Dynasties: Gu An, a painter in the Yuan Dynasty, and Gu Ying, a writer; Gu Chen Ding, a university student in Wuyingdian in Ming Dynasty, and Gu Xiancheng, a doctor of literature in the official department; Gu Zuyu, a thinker and scholar in the Ming and Qing Dynasties; Gu Zhenguan, a poet in Qing Dynasty, Gu, a scholar and Gu Guangqi, a collator, are all from Jiangsu today. Gu Kuang, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, is from Zhejiang today, and Gu, a painter in the Southern Tang Dynasty in the Five Dynasties, is from Jiangnan. Gu Junen, the general of the peasant uprising army in the late Ming Dynasty, was from Hubei.
Gu Kaizhi, who occupies an important position in the history of China painting, and Gu, a thinker in Qing Dynasty, are the most commendable people who care about names in ancient times. Gu Kaizhi was a versatile man in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and was known as "a master of poetry and calligraphy, especially in painting". His paintings are mainly portraits, immortals, Buddha statues, animals, landscapes and so on. The evaluation of his painting by later generations is "meaning to save the pen first and be full of painting". His works, such as On Painting and Wei Jinsheng's Praise for Painting, have had a great influence on the development of Chinese painting. Gu, a native of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, is knowledgeable. He has studied the national code system, anecdotes of counties and cities, astronomical phenomena, canals, military agriculture, classics and history, phonological exegesis and so on. In his later years, he paid attention to textual research, which created the atmosphere of Pu Xue in the Qing Dynasty and had an impact on Wu Pai and Huizhou schools of textual research in later generations. In phonology, the past and the future are related. He is one of the most respected scholars in the history of our country, and he is the author of Rizhilu and five phonological works.
In modern history, Gu's contribution to society is various. For example, Gu Jiegang, a historian of modern history, once edited Atlas of Chinese History, and presided over the punctuation of Zi Tong Zhi Jian and Twenty-four History. In the field of science and technology, Gu Jizhi served as the deputy editor-in-chief of the Ministry of Water Resources of Ci Hai and participated in the editing of the Encyclopedia of China; Gu Zhenchao, the first director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, contributed to the development of meteorological forecast in China. There is a famous Shanghai opera actor Gu in the art world. Pianist Gu Shengying has won many awards in international music competitions and is known as "a natural Chopin player and a real piano poet".