The world's largest ethnic group is named after a dynasty, and the Milky Way
More than 1.4 billion people, about a sixth of humanity, call themselves Han, after the dynasty that ruled from 202 BC to 220 AD. In ancient poetry the character han meant the Milky Way. Many southerners prefer a different dynastic name entirely: Tangren, people of Tang, which is why Chinatowns are 'Tang people streets'.
Before the Han dynasty, Chinese texts spoke of Huaxia, often glossed as 'beautiful grandeur', for the farming peoples of the middle and lower Yellow River. During the Warring States era the Hua–Yi distinction contrasted this 'civilised' core with outsiders on the edges of the Zhou realm. The label Han people first appeared in the Northern and Southern period, borrowed from a dynasty remembered as a golden age and comparable to Rome in population and reach. The language became Hanyu and the script 'Han characters'. Overseas communities still use Huaren and Huaqiao, from the older Hua root.
Southern China was not originally Han. Its lowlands belonged to peoples known collectively as the Bai Yue, or Hundred Yue. The first Qin emperor reportedly sent several hundred thousand men and fifteen thousand women under general Zhao Tuo to found farming and military colonies in Lingnan, today's Guangdong and Guangxi, and Emperor Han Wu Di added two hundred thousand more. Early cities such as Panyu were Han foundations, but beyond the garrisons the region stayed culturally Yue for centuries.
What changed the balance was a series of northern catastrophes. The Uprising of the Five Barbarians in 304 to 316, the An Lushan rebellion of 755 to 763 and the Jingkang incident of 1127 each drove waves of refugees south, a movement called 'garments and headdresses moving south' because aristocrats led the first one. Jiangnan was settled by noble families in the 4th century; Fujian and Guangdong grew from garrison descendants, exiles and refugees. The Tang dynasty, from 618 to 907, saw such migration that southerners adopted its name.
Those migrations explain the diversity of modern subgroups, identified by speech: Cantonese, Hakka, Hoklo, Wu speakers and others. Linguists suspect Wu and Min go back to the Jin period and Yue and Hakka to Tang and Song, with traces of Tai-Kradai languages absorbed from the Yue. Han now make up 91.11% of China's population, the largest of fifty-six recognised minzu.
Source: Han Chinese
