A River Named a People Most northern Chinese surnames trace to one of two ancestral stems: Ji (姬, Jī), the Zhou royal surname, and Jiang — written 姜 (Jiāng) — the older kind of name, a place before it was a family. The classical Guoyu preserves the charter: 「黄帝以姬水成，炎帝以姜水成」 — the Yellow Emperor came to…