For a long period of history, China was in a feudal society and practiced a centralized monarchy. The first to establish a unified feudal dynasty was Qin Shi Huang. Although there have always been mixed reviews of Qin Shi Huang in history, we still cannot deny his outstanding contributions. As we all know, ancient emperors called themselves "I", and this tradition began with Qin Shi Huang. So why did Qin Shi Huang choose "I" as the emperor's self-title?
In fact, in the beginning, "I" was not exclusive to the emperor, and nobles and even ordinary people could use "I" to refer to themselves, but after Qin Shi Huang, "I" became the emperor's special trip, and the people of Li could no longer use this self-title. After Qin Shi Huang unified the world, he created the first feudal dynasty in history, and he believed that his achievements and achievements were comparable to those of the three emperors and five emperors, so he no longer used the title of "king", but used the title of "emperor" to flaunt his merits and noble status. After the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, in order to please Qin Shi Huang, Li Si proposed to him that Muscle had become the first emperor in history, so he should have his own exclusive title to show his dignity and distinctiveness. Among the self-proclaimed names of I, I, Yu, and Wei, Qin Shi Huang chose "I", and there are generally two interpretations of his choice of this word.
The first is derived from the context of the word "I". As early as the Shang Dynasty, there has been a clear record of the self-title of "I", and "I" in the context of the sense, and other self-names are actually slightly different, "I" not only refers to "I", but also the meaning of "mine", Qin Shi Huang chose "I" can also express the idea of "under the whole world, it is not the king's land", in order to indicate that the world is its own creation, and he is the master of the whole world. The second is related to the ancient glyph of the word "朕". We all know that in addition to unifying the world, Qin Shi Huang also made great contributions to the unification of weights and measures, the unification of writing, etc. Before Qin Shi Huang had not unified the script, the font was very different from the common one now. At that time, the structure of "I" was "boat" on the left and "灷" on the right. "Zhou" means boat, and "灷" means fire, and in ancient tribes, only the patriarch had the power to control the fire, so "灷" also has the meaning of power. The ancients mostly believed in the theory of yin and yang, and the combination of "boat" and "qi" was in line with the idea of harmony between yin and yang, and the water represented by "boat" was in line with their idea that the Qin Dynasty was "water virtue", so Qin Shi Huang chose "I" as his self-title, reflecting the thoughts and beliefs of Dan.
Of course, after thousands of years, the real reason why Qin Shi Huang chose "I" in the first place is unknown, what we can do is to speculate through historical materials and draw a conclusion as close to the historical truth as possible.