Chinese surname · rank 210
古
古 is read as gǔ.
gǔ
Simplified and traditional 古
ancient; old; past; classical; also a surname
Wood
Time: Zhou ancestral-title and place-name traditions; Northern Wei Tuxi-to-Gu adoption layer; later Hui and Uyghur surname-use layers; Xia-dynasty tradition, c. 2070-1600 BCE
Place: Zhou/Qishan layer for Gu Gong Danfu; Gucheng/Kucheng place-name layer; Northern Wei Dai/Luoyang adoption layer; later Guangdong, Sichuan, and Henan distribution
Origin note
Gu is best treated as a multi-origin surname. One traditional Ji-surname account traces a branch to Gu Gong Danfu, also remembered as Zhou Taiwang, the grandfather of King Wen of Zhou; later descendants are said to have used the title Gu as a surname. A second line is a place-name surname: records summarized by the Gu family-source page connect Gucheng or Kucheng with a later Guchengshi group that split into Gu and Cheng. A third source-backed layer comes from the Northern Wei period, when the Xianbei Tuxi clan is recorded as changing to the single-character surname Gu; 23mofang also notes Hui and Uyghur surname-use layers and early historical figures such as Gu Chengshen, Gu Bi, Gu Daozi, and the Song-era Heyuan Gu family. This page therefore presents Gu as layered: ancestral-title tradition, place-name tradition, and Xianbei or other adoption layers.
Historical figures
Historical figures to enrich
This surname page is ready for a fame-ranked figure list. Later passes can add generals, poets, rulers, artists, scholars and modern public figures with source links.