You may or may not know it, but by choosing for yourself the family name of Qin, you would choose the very name from which was derived the word "China" (the Chinese themselves never refer to their country as "China" or any derivation of it, but as Chung kuo, "Middle Kingdom", reflecting the Chinese's belief throughout most of their history that they where at the heart of Civilization). That the name of this empire derived, from as early as the 1st-2nd century AD, from Qin, the name of China's first ruling dynasty, is an indication of the enormity of what the Qin dynasty achieved.

Or should I say, what Qin Shin Huang achieved - his heirs being unable to ensure the Qin's Dynasty's grip over China, which they lost in a matter of years. He was born Zhao Zheng in 259 BC, at a time where what would become China was divided into feudal states fighting each other (hence the name of that period: "The Warring States period"). He was the son of a prince of Qin who lived as a hostage in the enemy Zhao kingdom under an agreement between the two states. After escaping and returning to Qin, the future emperor's father became king of Qin, and Zhao Zheng succeeded him a few years later, in 245 BC.

Being so young, he of course reigned under a regent and it is only when he seized complete power thanks to a coup in 238, at the age of 21, that he began his march towards what we refer to as the unification of China - in reality, the territory covered by the kingdoms conquered by the King of Qin was significantly smaller than China today - which he completed in 221 BC, also the first year of his reign as Qin Shi Huang (First Emperor of China). During his reign, he was visionary enough not to remain content with a territorial unification, but imposed standardized writting, law code and weight and measure systems.

Qin Shi Huang's success and reign as Emperor are shrouded in controversy. For a very long time, he had, if you'll pardon me the expression, very bad press. Our sources closest to his reign were penned under subsequent Confucian rulers: it doesn't therefore come as a surprise that he, a defender of Legalism and ruler of a different dynasty, was painted in a much unfavorable light, underlining - and, at least to a certain extent, exagerating or even making up - his excesses, his cruelty and his tyranny towards his people, which, these scholars concluded, brought his own dynasty's downfall. This view remained largely undisputed until the fall of the Qing dynasty. Over the course of the 20th century, however, he made a notable return to grace, his strength displayed in unifying China an inspiration at a time when the country was at its weakest, in particular until the Communist Revolution. In the 70s, he began to be touted as an exemplary ruler, whose only weakness was not to have been thorough enough when dealing with opposition and division forces....

So where does the truth lie? Was he a tyrant or a visionary? As often in those cases, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. There is no doubt, however, that his accomplishments were not only pivotal for China and East Asia, but for the world as we know it today.

~Contributed by Aria Murasaka