Lín (Chinese: 林) is the Mandarin Chinese form of a Chinese surname for “Forest” or “Trees” that originated from late Shang Dynasty during the reign the last king, King Jou (1154 BC to 1122 BC) whose name (紂王) was actually given by posterity to mean a “cruel ruler”as the King’s official name was Tze Shin 帝辛. His uncle Bi Gan (比干) who was his royal court counselor, tried repeatedly to persuade the King to stop the wanton killing and plummeting of his subjects, and most of all, to stay away from one favorite concunbine who had rendered the King completely negligent of state business.
The concubine hated Bi Gan and jokingly asked the King to cut open Bi Gan’s chest to pull out Bi Gan’s heart, and examine if Bi Gan was a real saintly man because at that time there was a myth about saintly men having seven-orifice heart. It was a ploy to put Bi Gan to death in a most horrific way. Legend has it that when Bi Gan was thus killed, his corpse managed to walk a few hundred meters to an open field before falling down, and the field gave rise to a vegetable that is well loved by generations of Chinese until today, the “empty hearted” vegetable 空心菜 (cabbage).
Before the impending murder of Bi Gan, his pregnant wife, Chen, fled to the forest. Alone with no one to help her deliver,, she grabbed the branches of two adjacent trees and gave birth to a baby boy whom she named Jian. When she reached to the nearest town, in response to search parties sent by King Jou as to the name of the baby boy, she gave her child the surname Lin (Chinese character depicted by two trees). The King’s posse were therefore fooled as they were looking for someone with surname “Bi”.
Before long, King Jou was overthrown and killed by Zhou Wu Wang (Zhou Dynasty, 1134 BC to 256 BC). Zhou Wu Wang knew about the courageous court adviser Bi Gan and searched for Bi Gan’swife and son. When he found them, he honored them out of respect to Bi Gan. The mother and child were restored back into the royal family. The new king conferred the surname “Lin” on Bi Gan’s son, and this became the first Lin in history.Between 1122 BC and 1600 AD, there were at least 5 large scale migrations from the central part of China where the first Lin established the ancestor home. During this period, Lins moved to all parts of China but a vast number settled in the province of Canton.