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Lang on his grave tablet. Given the pattern of ordination names it seems that both Fa Ying and Qian Yi Lang were ordination names, and the latter is given at a higher stage of initiation and therefore used on the grave tablet instead of the other names.
Ordination names can be found in most Hakka genealogies. In Luo's book of excerpts the couple of genealogies in which ordination names are absent are very short, covering just a few generations. Among about 14 Hakka genealogies in the collections from Hong Kong that I have examined there is none that does not contain ordination names. Given the fact that dates of birth and death are not often indicated and that moves were frequent, it will take another study to track down in more detail the location and approximate date of ordinations. The examples chosen here give a rough picture.
If we count names that match the ordination name patterns but not designated as such in genealogies, the earliest men to have such names include a Liao Songde (602-) who is known alternatively as Xue Wu(5) Lang, and remembered as the founding ancestor of the Liaos at Ningdu, Jiangxi province.
If we limit ourselves to those ordination names designated as such the earliest ancestors in genealogies I examined bearing such names belong to the Suns of Zhangfengbao of Xingning county, and the Hes of Xingning. The Suns' founding ancestor of Guangdong, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces was allegedly conferred a title of hou (“marquis”) in 884, who settled in Ningdu of Jiangxi later. The genealogy, which showed only one ancestor for each generation until the 14th, showed ordination names for the 3rd and 7th to 10th generations. The 3rd generation ancestor probably lived during the Five Dynasties. The genealogy of Zhongba of Zijin, another genealogy which traced to the same founding ancestor, shows the names of his 7 grandsons, as well as the sons and grandsons of one of them, giving ordination names for almost all of those. In the other early example, that of the Hes, the earliest ancestor to have an ordination name is the father of a Da Yi Lang, the latter lived from 892 to 992.63 Although the genealogy gave the names of ancestors from many generations earlier, none of his predecessors had ordination names. During the Song the founding ancestor of the Wens of Xingning who moved to Fujian, again from Jiangxi, also had an ordination name.