Chinese surnames: the most common last names, meanings and pronunciation

October 13, 2026 · 10 min read

A Chinese surname is almost always one character and one syllable: 王 wáng — Wang, 李 lǐ — Li, 张 zhāng — Zhang. It comes before the given name and never changes: men and women have exactly the same surnames. Below: the most common Chinese last names with characters, pronunciation and meaning, where they came from, rare two-syllable surnames, characters with a special reading, and why the same surname can be spelled Zhang, Chang or Cheung in English.

How many surnames China has, and why they're so short

A few thousand surnames are in use, but they're spread very unevenly: the vast majority of Chinese people have one of about a hundred common ones. So it's easy to find three Wangs in one class, and nobody is surprised.

"Surname" in Chinese is 姓 xìng — surname, "given name" is 名 míng — given name. Surnames are short because in Chinese one character is one syllable and one idea: surnames took shape in ancient times from the names of states, fiefs, offices and clans, and one character was enough. Telling people apart is the job of the given name: it's made of one or two characters chosen almost freely, so there are far more given names than surnames. More on that in the article on Chinese names.

There's an expression 百家姓 bǎijiāxìng — "the surnames of a hundred families". It's the title of an old list of surnames children learned to read from — it actually has several hundred, and "a hundred" simply means "many". The same image gave the word 老百姓 lǎobǎixìng — ordinary people, literally "the old hundred surnames".

Where Chinese surnames come from

In ancient China a noble had two clan names. 姓 xìng — xing was the large clan by blood — there were few of them, and several of the oldest contain the radical "woman" 女: 姬 Ji, 姜 Jiang, 姚 Yao. The character 姓 itself is made of "woman" and "to give birth". 氏 shì — shi named a branch of the clan, received together with land or an office. Over time the difference faded, both words came to mean the same thing, and today "surname" in Chinese is 姓氏 xìngshì — surname, family name or simply 姓.

Most of today's surnames grew out of those branches, and they have several sources:

• Names of states and fiefs. Descendants of rulers and the people of a land took its name: 赵 Zhao, 吴 Wu, 郑 Zheng, 宋 Song, 韩 Han, 陈 Chen — all ancient states.
• Offices and trades. 司马 Sima, "in charge of horses", and 司徒 Situ were titles of high office; the surname 陶 Tao, "pottery", is usually linked to the craft — much like Smith or Baker in English.
• Titles and ancestors' names. 王 Wang means "king, ruler": descendants of many different ruling houses used it, so people named Wang share no common ancestor. Other clans took a character from the name or nickname of their founder.
• Where the family lived. 东郭 Dongguo is "the eastern city wall", 西门 Ximen "the west gate".

That's why the same surname often arose independently in different places, and two Chinese people with the same surname are often not related at all.

The most common Chinese surnames: the list

The top three are 王, 李 and 张: each is shared by tens of millions of people, and together they cover around a fifth of the country's population. After that the order varies a little from list to list and from province to province, so the table goes roughly from most to least common. You can listen to the first ten — tap the syllable.

The last column is the meaning of the character as an ordinary word, not a "translation" of the surname. Someone named 马 Ma doesn't think of himself as "Horse", just as a Mr. Baker doesn't think about bread. Many surnames have no dictionary meaning at all: they're names of ancient states or characters that today appear only as surnames.

Watch for pairs that look identical in English: 徐 xú and 许 xǔ are both "Xu", even though the characters and the tones differ. That's why Chinese people often explain the character when giving their surname: "张, the one made of 弓 'bow' and 长 'long'".

Why the same surname is Zhang, Chang and Cheung

If you've met people called Lee, Chan or Wong, you've met the same surnames as in the table — just spelled differently. Chinese characters don't carry a spelling, so each romanization writes the sound its own way:

• Pinyin — the official system of mainland China since the 1950s and the standard in English today: Zhang, Chen, Huang, Xu.
• Wade–Giles — the older English system, still common in Taiwan and in older books: Chang, Hsu, Hsieh, Kuo. Its "hs" is pinyin x, its "ch" stands for pinyin zh or j, "ts" for z and "k" for g.
• Cantonese spellings — Hong Kong and many older communities overseas, where the surname is said in Cantonese, so it sounds different, not just looks different: 王 and 黄 are both Wong, 陈 is Chan, 吴 is Ng.
• Hokkien spellings — in Singapore and Malaysia: 陈 Tan, 林 Lim.

So a Wong may be 王 or 黄, and only the characters tell you which. In pinyin the surname is written first and separately; a two-syllable given name is one word: Wang Xiaoming. How each pinyin letter actually sounds is best heard in the pinyin chart — English spelling gives only a rough idea of the sound and none of the tone.

Are there male and female Chinese surnames?

No. Chinese has no grammatical gender and no endings, so a surname is the same for a man and a woman: he is 王, and so is she. Only given names differ by gender, and even then not always. They have their own articles: Chinese boy names and Chinese girl names.

• A wife keeps her own surname. In modern China a woman usually keeps her surname after marriage, so husband and wife normally have different ones.
• A child usually takes the father's surname. But the mother's surname is allowed too, and it's becoming more common.
• No middle names. A full name is surname plus given name, two or three characters in all, occasionally four.

Rare and two-syllable surnames

Besides one-character surnames there are two-syllable ones — 复姓 fùxìng — "compound surname". A few dozen are in use; they're rare, but well known from history and literature: the historian Sima Qian, the strategist Zhuge Liang.

• 欧阳ōuyángOuyangthe most common of the two-syllable surnames
• 司马sīmǎSimaliterally "in charge of horses", an ancient office
• 诸葛zhūgěZhugenot translatable from its characters
• 上官shàngguānShangguanliterally "high official"
• 东方dōngfāngDongfangliterally "the east"
• 司徒sītúSituthe name of an ancient office

Because of these surnames, a four-character name splits not "one plus three" but "two plus two": 欧阳 is the surname, the rest is the given name. In English a two-syllable surname is written as one word: Ouyang, Sima, Zhuge.

One-character surnames can be rare too. Beyond the top hundred there are thousands of surnames, each shared by very few people: in the table below, for example, 仇 Qiu and 区 Ou, and in the list of "beautiful" ones, 云 Yun and 花 Hua.

Surnames with a special reading

Another trap: characters that are read differently in a surname than in the dictionary. Many characters have several readings, and the surname kept a separate, often older one. These have to be learned by heart — you can't guess the reading from the character:

朴 Piáo is a surname of Korean origin: it's the same character used to write the Korean surname Park.

Beautiful Chinese surnames with meanings

If you want a surname with a clear image behind it — say, for a character in a book or a game — pick one where the character is still a living word. All the surnames below are real; some are common, some rare.

• 白báiBai — white
• 金jīnJin — gold
• 石shíShi — stone
• 江jiāngJiang — great river
• 雷léiLei — thunder
• 龙lóngLong — dragon
• 云yúnYun — cloudrare
• 花huāHua — flowerrare
• 夏xiàXia — summer
• 梅méiMei — plum blossom

Surnames from the big table belong here too: 林 Lin, "forest", 叶 Ye, "leaf", 高 Gao, "tall". And the famous poet Li Bai — 李白 — is literally "Plum White". What the characters themselves are made of you can work out with the Chinese radicals.

How to address someone by surname

In China people are addressed by surname far more often than by given name: the given name is for family and close friends. The surname gets a word that shows the relationship, placed after it or before it.

• 王先生wángxiānshengMr. Wangpolite, to a man
• 王女士wángnǚshìMs. Wangpolite, to a woman
• 王老师wánglǎoshīTeacher Wangsurname plus title, the most ordinary way
• 老王lǎowáng"old Wang"friendly, to someone older or a longtime acquaintance
• 小王xiǎowáng"young Wang"friendly, to someone younger

To ask someone's surname politely, say 您贵姓？ nínguìxìng — what is your surname? — literally "your honorable surname?". The answer: 我姓王 wǒxìngwáng — my surname is Wang. More phrases for meeting people are in the article on greetings.