Li (surname 栗)
Chinese family name (栗)
Lì is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname written 栗 in Chinese character. It is also spelled Leut according to the Cantonese pronunciation. Relatively uncommon, it is not listed in the Song dynasty classic Hundred Family Surnames.
Li 栗 is the 249th most common surname in China, with a total population of about 300,000, half of whom live in Henan province.
Origins
According to traditional accounts, the surname Li 栗 originates from the legendary tribe or state called Lilu (栗陆氏), and the historical state of Li, which has been linked to Lilu.
In the third-century text Records of Emperors and Kings (帝王世纪), Huangfu Mi records the legend that goddess Nüwa enfeoffed thirteen tribes or states, all having the Feng (风) surname. Lilu was ranked the fourth among the thirteen. Professor Li Yujie of Henan University believes that Lilu was likely the first people in China to cultivate chestnuts (the character li 栗 also means chestnut).
During the Shang dynasty, the state of Li (栗) existed in what is now Xiayi County, Shangqiu, Henan province. After the state was conquered by the Zhou dynasty, its people adopted the name of their former state as their surname.
The public source identifies “Li (surname 栗)” as chinese family name (栗). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around surname, Chinese and family.
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This entry incorporates text from “Li (surname 栗)” 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.