text: Names Modern Chinese sources often give the personal name of Qin Shi Huang as Ying Zheng, with Ying () taken as the surname and Zheng () the given name. However, in ancient China, the naming convention differed, and the clan name Zhao (), the place where he was born and raised, may be used as the surname. Unlike modern Chinese names, the nobles of ancient China had two distinct surnames: the ancestral name () comprised a larger group descended from a prominent ancestor, usually said to have lived during the time of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors of Chinese legend, and the clan name () comprised a smaller group that showed a branch's current fief or recent title. The ancient practice was to list men's names separatelySima Qian's "Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin" introduces him as "given the name Zheng and the surname Zhao"or to combine the clan surname with the personal name: Sima's account of Chu describes the sixteenth year of the reign of King Kaolie as "the time when Zhao Zheng was enthroned as King of Qin". However, since modern Chinese surnames (despite usually descending from clan names) use the same character as the old ancestral names, it is much more common in modern Chinese sources to see the emperor's personal name written as Ying Zheng, using the ancestral name of the Ying family.