Three Huan
three aristocratic clans dominating the ancient state of Lu
The Three Huan (Chinese: 三桓; pinyin: Sān Huán) refers to three Chinese aristocratic clans, all descendants of Duke Huan of Lu, in the State of Lu, which dominated the government affairs, displacing the power of the dukes, for nearly three centuries during the Spring and Autumn period. They are the Jisun (季孫) or Ji, Mengsun (孟孫) or Meng, and Shusun (叔孫) clans.
Etymology
The characters Bo (伯), Meng (孟), Zhong (仲), Shu (叔), and Ji (季) are originally ordinals used in courtesy names to indicate a person's rank among his or her siblings of the same gender who survived to adulthood. The eldest brother's courtesy name would be prefixed with the word "Bo" (or "Meng" if he was born to a secondary wife), the second with "Zhong", the youngest with "Ji", and the rest with "Shu". For instance, Confucius's courtesy name was Zhongni (仲尼).
As the power of the Three Huan became hereditary, the descendants of Duke Zhuang's brothers used the ordinal numbers as family names to distinguish their branches of the House of Ji.
History
The three houses were cadet branches of the Lu ducal house, which was itself a branch of the royal house of the Zhou dynasty. Duke Huan of Lu (r. 711–694 BC) had four sons. While the oldest son by his main wife Wen Jiang became his heir, and subsequently Duke Zhuang of Lu, his other three sons—respectively Qingfu (慶父), Shuya (叔牙) and Jiyou (季友) all became important officials during the reign of Duke Zhuang, and gained substantial power in the state.
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This entry incorporates text from “Three Huan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.