The Confucius Family Tree – The World’s Longest

A family tree is generally a graphic illustration of family relationships that go deeper through generations. There are different family tree types used today. Some charts offer more detailed information, and not simply include the names, birth or death dates of the family members. Here’s a look at the family tree of one of the world’s most famous personalities, Confucius, the Chinese philosopher and educator

Who Was Confucius?

K’ung-tzu, pinyin, K’ung-fu-tzu. Confucius was a famous Chinese thinker and philosopher, whose teachings and values cornered on correctness of social relationships, justice, sincerity, personal and government morality. His teachings and values became popular, and gained prominence in China from the Han Dynasty, up to today. His thoughts and ideals have been developed into a system of philosophy called Confucianism, which was introduced in Europe by an Italian Jesuit priest named Matteo Ricci. Fr Ricci also coined K’ung-fu-tzu’s Latin name as Confucius.    

The Confucius’ Family Tree Keeps On Growing

Confucius has been dead for more than 2,000 years, but his family surprisingly keeps on growing. His descendants continue to flourish in China and all around the world. The latest version of his family tree has tripled in size, and the process of registering new members to his family tree was completed in 1007, and the number of updated members now stands at more than two million. 

The World’s Longest Family Tree

In 1998, a 7th generation descendant of Confucius, Kong Deyong, began the registration process for new members of this illustrious Chinese philosopher’s family tree. Kong set up a committee in Hong Kong, and 450 branches were also set-up around the world, to assist in the effort. The last revision of the famous Chine sage’s family tree was made in 1930, and that time it included only 600,000 members. Compared with previous versions, the new and updated family tree will include for the first time female and overseas descendants. The Confucius family tree is regarded as the world’s longest, and has recorded more than 80 generations of his family. 

The living member of Confucius’ family tree paid five Yuan or 70 US cents for official registration. The committee also included many of the deceased members, provided their descendants can show document to prove they truly did belong to the tree, or if they can show a collateral family tree that conforms to the Confucius genealogy. 

Centuries after his death, his followers and adherents organized his teachings into the Analects, and in a few years after, the Analects and other core teachings were constituted to form the philosophical system which is now known as Confucianism. A different form of Confucianism was also believed to have held sway and influence over a large swath of countries, from China, Korea and Vietnam, until the 1800’s. 
