Qin Shi Huang (February 259 – 12 July 210 BC) was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of China (Chinese: 皇帝; pinyin: Huángdì). He invented the title huángdì rather than reuse the existing title for "king" (Chinese: 王; pinyin: wáng); the new title was used by monarchs in China and other countries for the next two millennia. Born in Handan, the capital of Zhao, as Ying Zheng (嬴政) or Zhao Zheng (趙政), his parents were King Zhuangxiang of Qin and Lady Zhao. The wealthy merchant Lü Buwei assisted him in succeeding his father as the king of Qin, after which he became King Zheng of Qin (秦王政). By 221 BC, he had conquered all the other warring states and unified all of China, and he ascended the throne as China's first emperor. During his reign, his generals greatly expanded the size of the Chinese state: campaigns south of Chu permanently added the Yue lands of Hunan and Guangdong to the Sinosphere, and campaigns in Inner Asia conquered the Ordos Plateau from the nomadic Xiongnu, although the Xiongnu later rallied under Modu Chanyu. Qin Shi Huang also worked with his minister Li Si to enact major economic and political reforms aimed at the standardization of the diverse practices among earlier Chinese states. He is traditionally said to have banned and burned many books and executed scholars. His public works projects included the incorporation of diverse state walls into a single Great Wall of China and a massive new national road system, as well as his city-sized mausoleum guarded by a life-sized Terracotta Army. He ruled until his death in 210 BC, during his fifth tour of eastern China. Qin Shi Huang has often been portrayed as a tyrant and strict Legalist—characterizations that stem partly from the scathing assessments made during the Han dynasty that succeeded the Qin. Since the mid-20th century, scholars have begun questioning this evaluation, inciting considerable discussion on the actual nature of his policies and reforms. According to the sinologist Michael Loewe "few would contest the view that the achievements of his reign have exercised a paramount influence on the whole of China's subsequent history, marking the start of an epoch that closed in 1911."
Names
Modern Chinese sources often give the personal name of Qin Shi Huang as Ying Zheng, with Yíng (嬴) taken as the surname and Zheng (政) the given name. However, in ancient China, the naming convention differed, and the clan name Zhao (趙), the place where he was born and raised, may be used as the surname. Unlike modern Chinese names, the nobility of ancient China had two distinct surnames: the ancestral name (姓) comprised a larger group descended from a prominent ancestor, usually said to have lived during the time of the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, and the clan name (氏) comprised a smaller group that showed a branch's current fief or recent title. The ancient practice was to list men's names separately—Sima Qian's "Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin" introduces him as "given the name Zheng and the surname Zhao"—or to combine the clan surname with the personal name: Sima's account of Chu describes the sixteenth year of the reign of King Kaolie as "the time when Zhao Zheng was enthroned as King of Qin". However, since modern Chinese surnames (despite usually descending from clan names) use the same character as the old ancestral names, it is much more common in modern Chinese sources to see the emperor's personal name written as Ying Zheng, using the ancestral name of the House of Ying. The rulers of the state of Qin had styled themselves kings from the time of King Huiwen in 325 BC. Upon his ascension, Zheng became known as the King of Qin or King Zheng of Qin. This title made him the nominal equal of the rulers of Shang and Zhou, the last of whose kings had been deposed by King Zhaoxiang of Qin in 256 BC. Following the surrender of Qi in 221 BC, King Zheng reunited all of the lands of the former Kingdom of Zhou. Rather than maintain his rank as king, however, he created a new title of huángdì (emperor) for himself. This new title combined two titles—huáng of the mythical Three Sovereigns (三皇, Sān huáng) and the dì of the legendary Five Emperors (五帝, Wŭ Dì) of Chinese prehistory. The title was intended to appropriate some of the prestige of the Yellow Emperor, whose cult was popular in the later Warring States period and who was considered to be a founder of the Chinese people. King Zheng chose the new regnal name of First Emperor (Shǐ Huángdì, Wade-Giles Shih Huang-ti) on the understanding that his successors would be successively titled the "Second Emperor", "Third Emperor", and so on through the generations. (In fact, the scheme lasted only as long as his immediate heir, the Second Emperor.) The new title carried religious overtones. For that reason, sinologists - starting with Peter A. Boodberg or Edward H. Schafer - sometimes translate it as "thearch" and the First Emperor as the First Thearch. The First Emperor intended that his realm would remain intact through the ages but, following its overthrow and replacement by Han after his death, it became customary to prefix his title with Qin. Thus:
秦, Qín or Ch'in, "of Qin" 始, Shǐ or Shih, "first" 皇帝, Huángdì or Huang-ti, "emperor", a new term coined from 皇, Huáng or Huang, literally "shining" or "splendid" and formerly most usually applied "as an epithet of Heaven", a title of the Three Sovereigns, the high god of the Zhou 帝, Dì or Ti, the high god of the Shang dynasty, possibly composed of their divine ancestors, and used by the Zhou as a title of the legendary Five Emperors, particularly the Yellow Emperor As early as Sima Qian, it was common to shorten the resulting four-character Qin Shi Huangdi to 秦始皇, variously transcribed as Qin Shihuang or Qin Shi Huang. Following his elevation as emperor, both Zheng's personal name 政 and possibly its homophone 正 became taboo. The First Emperor also arrogated the first-person pronoun 朕 for his exclusive use, and in 212 BC began calling himself "The Immortal" (真人; zhēnrén). Others were to address him as "Your Majesty" (陛下; diànxià) in person and "Your Highness" (上; shàng) in writing.
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