Chinese surname · rank 345
嵇
嵇 is read as jī.
jī
Simplified and traditional 嵇
mountain in Henan
Earth
Time: Xia-dynasty restoration tradition, c. 2070-1600 BCE
Place: Kuaiji and later Qiao-commandery Jishan place-name traditions; Northern Wei changed-surname layer recorded separately.
Origin note
Ji is treated as a surname formed around place-name and changed-surname traditions, not just the ordinary character meaning. The main traditional line starts with the Kuaiji account: sources say Shaokang placed his son Jizhu at Kuaiji to serve the Yu ritual tradition, after which descendants used Kuaiji/Ji-related naming. Later accounts say part of this line moved to Jishan in Qiao commandery around the Han period and adopted from that mountain/place name. A second layer records Northern Wei Xianbei compound surnames such as Tongji and Hexi being changed to the single-character Ji during sinicization. Because sources preserve more than one route into the surname, this entry presents Ji as a convergence of Kuaiji/Jishan locality tradition and Xianbei changed-surname evidence, with Ji Kang used as a later famous bearer rather than proof of all family origins.
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