The ancestors of the Kang family are Kang Shu of Weiguo. According to Historical Records of Wei Kangshu's Family, Kang Shu's real name is Ji Feng, and he is Zhou Wuwang's half-brother. After King Wu won the world, he was sealed in Kangdi (now Yuzhou, Henan Province), so he was called Kang Shu. After Zhou Wuwang's death, there was a rebellion, which was put down. The old capital of Shang Dynasty and the area around the seven tribes of Yin and Min were named Kang Shu, and national defense was established, with Song as its capital (now Qixian County, Henan Province). After Ji Feng was sealed in Weiguo, he was named Wei Kangshu. After he went to defend the country, he learned from the experience and lessons of the rise and fall of the Yin Dynasty, cherished the people's strength and governed the country well, so he won the hearts of the people. Later, he was appointed as the shepherd of the Zhou Dynasty by Zhou Chengwang, who held the power of life and death. From then on, Wei Kangshu's descendants took his original posthumous title as his surname, namely Kang. Tang people, Yuan He recorded in the Collection of Surnames: "Kang, the grandson of Uncle Weikang, takes history as his surname."
Besides Kang Shu, a descendant of the Han nationality, there is another one from the Western Regions. According to Han Shu, Book of the Old Tang Dynasty and other books, there was a comfortable country in the ancient western regions, between the present Balkhash Lake and the Aral Sea. Because the voice of great men spread far and wide at that time, when the Han Dynasty became emperor, King Kangju sent a prince into the Han Dynasty and settled down from then on. There was also a Guo Kang in ancient times. His hometown was in the former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan, which was once under the jurisdiction of the Tang Dynasty. Ambassadors from these two countries came to China and settled in China. They all take the country name as their surname, also known as Kang. According to the Records of the History of Song Dynasty, in Song Dynasty, Kuang changed his surname to Kang in order to avoid taboo, but he was mainly a descendant of Kang Shu and a westerner.
Kang Shu's descendants mainly developed in northern Henan in the early stage. Wei San moved the capital for the second time, and Wei Wengong moved the capital to Chuqiu (now east of hua county, Henan); Wei successfully moved to Diqiu (now southwest of Puyang, Henan Province) and was later destroyed by Wei. Later, he revived the country and moved to Wang Ye (now Qinyang, Henan). Moved the capital several times, so that Kang's descendants can multiply on a larger scale. In the Han Dynasty, part of Kang moved to Hebei and other provinces in the north, and part moved to Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the south. According to Deng's Discrimination of Ancient and Modern Surnames, Kangju Renkang first settled in Hexi Corridor in Han Dynasty. Jin moved to Lantian (now Lantian, Shaanxi) because of the war, and then gradually moved to the southeast. Kang, whose ancestral home was in the north, crossed the river to the south in the early Tang Dynasty, settled in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, flourished in Huiji (now Shaoxing, Zhejiang) and became a local chief. Therefore, most of Kang's families in the south are from Huiji. During the Tang Dynasty, Jingzhao (now Shaanxi An) was also one of Kang's counties. The Kang family is also distributed in Shanxi, Shandong and other places today. During the Song Dynasty, some people moved to Sichuan and Fujian. In the Ming Dynasty, the Kang family was more widely distributed, and some people moved to Taihe, Jiangxi, Shaoyang, Hunan and Shunde, Guangdong. Since the Qing Dynasty, the Kang family in Fujian, Guangdong and other places moved to Taiwan Province province one after another, and some of them emigrated overseas.
Kang's famous articles are as follows: Kangtai in the Three Kingdoms period was one of the earlier overseas travelers in China, with more than 100 countries; Kang Senhui, a monk in the Three Kingdoms period, was a well-off man. He knows astronomy and divination, and You Xian is the founder of Jiangnan Buddhism. General Tang Kang; Kang Kunlun, a pipa player in the Tang Dynasty, was a native of the Western Regions. During the Southern Song Dynasty, there appeared heroes Kang Zaiyu, Kang Bao, Kang Yanze and literati Kang. In the Yuan Dynasty, there was a calligrapher Kang. Kang, an opera writer. There was a writer Kang Hai in the Ming Dynasty. Kang Youwei, the leader of modern reformists, was called "Mr. Nanhai" by the world. 1898 carried out the reform movement and fled abroad after being suppressed. He has written many books, such as "New Learning and Pseudo-Classics Examination" and "Confucius System Reform Examination", which are highly praised by modern academic circles.
Among the hundreds of surnames ranked by population in China today, Kang ranks 75th.