Lim, or Lin, Lam or Lum, means forest and marks you as a descendent of the Hakka, a subgroup of the Han Chinese. People bearing this surname had their roots in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangxi and Fujian on the southern coast of China, and migrated northward due to social upheaval during the Jin dynasty. The term Hakka probably dates to the Qing dynasty.

There is a story of how the name originated. During the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BC), Bi Gan, Qi Zi and Wei Zi, the three uncles of emperor Shang Zhou, were made government officials. Shang Zhou was an cruel and corrupt emperor, and his uncles tried to persuade him to change his ways. When their repeated attempts at reforming him met with utter failure, Wei Zi resigned and Qi Zi pretended to be insane so as to escape their onerous duties.

But Bi Gan kept trying, since he considered it his duty as a servant to correct a master who was misguided. Shang Zhou differed in his opinion and finally tiring of the constant nagging of this irritating uncle, he summoned him and told him that he understood that a man's heart have seven openings. He ordered his guards to cut into the chest of his uncle to have a look at his heart, to see if he was truly loyal, which of course killed the poor uncle.

When Bi Gan's pregnant wife heard of her husband's murder, she realized that the rest of the family was in danger, so she hid herself into the woods until she had given birth. This son she named Jian, and when the evil emperor was overthrown by Zhou Wu Wang, she and her child were given a place of honor in the court, due to the upright reputation of her dead husband. The emperor bestowed a new surname upon the child, Lim, since the boy had been born in the forest.


Source:
utopian.net

~Contributed by Feiyan Zhou