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Updated January 23, 2020

Family name origins & meanings

  • Chinese : from the name of Qiao mountain. The ancient Chinese emperor Huang Di (2697–2595 bc), considered father of the Chinese people, is buried on Qiao mountain. In honor of this, some descendants later adopted the name of the mountain as their surname. Much later, during the Later Zhou dynasty (951–960 ad), the emperor ordered that the character for this name (which also means ‘bridge’) be modified to another similar character of the same pronunciation, the current character for the surname Qiao.

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