The 100 most common Chinese surnames, with meanings, pinyin and Cantonese spellings

A Chinese name is a surname followed by a given name, and the surname is the stable half: there are only a few thousand in use, and about a hundred of them cover eighty-five per cent of the population. Three alone, 王 Wang, 李 Li and 张 Zhang, are carried by more than 270 million people, which is why "Wang" is the single most common surname in the world.

The list below is in order of population in mainland China, following the Ministry of Public Security's household-registration count. The first thirty are stable across every survey; below that the order shifts a little from count to count. Each row gives the character, the Mandarin pinyin used in mainland China and Singapore, the spellings you see in Hong Kong and in older overseas communities (Cantonese) and in Taiwan (Wade–Giles), and what the character meant before it was a name.

The top ten

Two things are visible even here. The Cantonese and Mandarin spellings of the same character can be unrecognisable as the same name (吴 is Wu in Beijing and Ng in Hong Kong), and two different characters can share a spelling (王 and 黄 are both Wong in Cantonese). When an English speaker meets a "Wong" there is no way to know which character it is without asking.

Eleven to one hundred

Why so few surnames

Europe accumulated surnames late and from everywhere: trades, places, fathers' names, nicknames. China fixed its surnames early. Most of today's common ones were already family names in the Zhou dynasty, three thousand years ago, when they marked descent from a state, a fief or a royal house (赵, 周, 吴, 陈, 郑, 宋 are all old state names). After that, new surnames rarely appeared and old ones slowly disappeared, because a surname passes only through sons, and a line with no sons takes its name with it. Over a hundred generations that process thins the list, and it concentrates the population in the names that happened to belong to the biggest clans. Korea, which took the same system, went further still: half of all Koreans are Kim, Lee or Park.

The Hundred Family Surnames (百家姓), the rhyming primer children learned from the Song dynasty on, begins 赵钱孙李 (Zhao, Qian, Sun, Li) not because those were the biggest but because 赵 was the surname of the Song emperors and had to come first. It lists over four hundred names and is still the reason many Chinese people can recite the first lines.

Two-character surnames

A handful of surnames have two characters, and they are rare enough that people notice them: 欧阳 Ōuyáng, 司马 Sīmǎ, 诸葛 Zhūgě (the strategist Zhuge Liang), 上官 Shàngguān, 夏侯 Xiàhóu, 慕容 Mùróng, 东方 Dōngfāng. Only 欧阳 is at all common, with under a million bearers. In fiction they are a shortcut for aristocratic or exotic, which is why martial-arts novels are full of them.

How a surname is said and written

The surname always comes first: 李安然 is Ms Li, given name Anran. Chinese people in English-speaking countries often reverse the order on forms, so the same person may appear as "Anran Li" in a database and "Li Anran" in a Chinese newspaper; both are her, and "Li" is the family name in both.

Surnames are also where the romanisation systems collide. Mainland China and Singapore use pinyin; Taiwan still largely uses Wade–Giles (so 张 is Chang, 周 is Chou, 蔡 is Tsai); Hong Kong spells by Cantonese sound in its own convention (Cheung, Chow, Choi); older Malaysian and Indonesian Chinese families may use Hokkien (林 as Lim, 陈 as Tan, 黄 as Ng or Ooi, 吴 as Goh). The table above gives the two you meet most often. If you need the character behind a romanised name and have only the spelling, you often cannot get it from the spelling alone.

Choosing a Chinese surname for yourself

A Chinese name made for a foreigner needs a surname too, and there are three ways to get one.

By sound. Take the first syllable of your family name and match it to a real Chinese surname that sounds like it: Miller to 米 Mǐ, Smith to 史 Shǐ, Johnson to 强 Qiáng or 江 Jiāng, Martin to 马 Mǎ, Davis to 戴 Dài, Lee to 李 Lǐ, Garcia to 贾 Jiǎ, Brown to 布 Bù. This is what most Chinese teachers do for their students and what diplomats do for heads of state, and it is why the US embassy writes Trump as 特朗普 but a Chinese name for a Mr Trump would start with 唐 Táng or 川 Chuān.

By meaning. Translate the family name if it has one: Stone to 石 Shí, King to 王 Wáng, Forest or Wood to 林 Lín, Gold to 金 Jīn, White to 白 Bái, Long to 龙 Lóng, Summers to 夏 Xià. These are satisfying when they work and feel forced when they do not.

By choice. Simply pick one of the common surnames because you like its sound or its meaning. Nobody is checking, and a real, common surname is better than a rare one: a foreigner called 欧阳 reads like a character in a novel.

Whichever you take, use a surname that exists. The characters above are all genuine family names; a character that is not one (美, 爱, 龙 as a given name) in the surname position reads as a mistake to any Chinese reader. Our name generator chooses a surname by sound from your family name first, then a given name to go with it, and explains both.

Questions

What is the most common Chinese surname?

王 Wang, with about 101 million people in mainland China, just ahead of 李 Li. Counting the whole world, Li may be slightly larger because of overseas communities. Either way, each is bigger than the population of Germany.

How many Chinese surnames are there?

Around six thousand are recorded as in use, but a hundred cover roughly 85 per cent of the population and the top twenty cover more than half.

Are Wong and Wang the same surname?

Usually: Wong is the Cantonese spelling of 王, which is Wang in Mandarin. But Wong is also the Cantonese spelling of 黄 (Huang in Mandarin). The spelling cannot tell you which, so the character is the only reliable identity of a Chinese surname.

Do Chinese women change their surname when they marry?

No. A woman keeps her own surname for life; children take the father's surname by default, though taking the mother's is legal and increasingly seen. The habit in Hong Kong of adding the husband's surname in front (陈方安生, Anson Chan) is a formal, mostly older usage.

Can I have a Chinese surname if I am not Chinese?

Yes. Chinese names given to foreigners always include one, chosen by sound or meaning from the real surnames above, and no one will think it odd. What reads as odd is a surname that does not exist or a given name in the surname's place.

Names and characters in this guide follow the rules we use when proposing names: common simplified characters, a surname from the Hundred Family Surnames, no awkward homophones. Where a guide says a native speaker reviewed it, the review date is above.