A Chinese compound surname is a
Chinese surname
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Written Chinese names begin with surnames, unlik ...
using more than one
character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
. Many of these
compound surname
In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community.
Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name, ...
s derive from
Zhou dynasty
The Zhou dynasty ( ; Old Chinese ( B&S): *''tiw'') was a royal dynasty of China that followed the Shang dynasty. Having lasted 789 years, the Zhou dynasty was the longest dynastic regime in Chinese history. The military control of China by th ...
Chinese noble and official titles, professions, place names and other areas, to serve a purpose. Some are originally from various tribes that lived in ancient China, while others were created by joining two one-character family names. Only a few of these names (e.g.
Ouyang 陽/欧阳 Shangguan 官 Sima
Sima or SIMA may refer to:
People
* Sima (Chinese surname)
* Sima (given name), a Persian feminine name in use in Iran and Turkey
* Sima (surname)
Places
* Sima, Comoros, on the island of Anjouan, near Madagascar
* Sima de los Huesos, a cav ...
馬/司马 Zhuge
Zhuge in Chinese, Jegal in Korean, Gia Cát in Vietnamese or Morokuzu in Japanese is a compound surname in East Asia. It is ranked 314th in ''Hundred Family Surnames'' in China. The surname has often been synonymous with wisdom in Chinese culture ...
葛/诸葛 Situ 徒 Xiahou 侯 Huangfu 甫 and
Huyan
The Huyan (; LHC: *''ha(C)-jan'' < (~200 BCE): *''hɑ-janH/B'') was a noble house that led the last remn ...
延 can still be found quite commonly in modern times with Ouyang, Shangguan, Sima and Situ appearing most frequently. Many clans eventually took on a single-character surname for various reasons. Chinese surnames with more than two characters are mostly not of ethnic Chinese origin (e.g.
Xianbei
The Xianbei (; ) were a Proto-Mongolic ancient nomadic people that once resided in the eastern Eurasian steppes in what is today Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Northeastern China. They originated from the Donghu people who splintered into th ...
or
Turkic), and are becoming exceedingly rare to find, but are still in use today.
Lists below are arranged alphabetically by their Mandarin
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...
spellings.
Native Chinese compound surnames
Double-barrelled surnames
Double-barrelled surname
A double-barrelled name is a type of compound surname, typically featuring two words (occasionally more), often joined by a hyphen. Examples of some notable people with double-barrelled names include Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Sacha Baron Co ...
() occurs sometimes when both families of a marriage wish to pass down their surnames, or when a child wishes to commemorate both the biological and foster parents. This is often distinguished from compound surnames (), which cannot be split into two single-character surnames. A doubled-barrelled surname is also distinguished from a
married name
When a person (traditionally the wife in many cultures) assumes the family name of their spouse, in some countries that name replaces the person's previous surname, which in the case of the wife is called the maiden name ("birth name" is also us ...
(), as married names are not passed down to the next generations.
Non-Han surnames
Peoples other than Han have resided in China and have their names transliterated into Chinese. A large number of these non-Han surnames contain more than one Chinese character.
See also
{{wiktionary, Chinese compound surnames
*
Chinese surname
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Written Chinese names begin with surnames, unlik ...
*
Japanese surname
Officially, among Japanese names there are 291,129 different Japanese surnames, as determined by their kanji, although many of these are pronounced and romanized similarly. Conversely, some surnames written the same in kanji may also be pronounced ...
*
Korean surname
*
Vietnamese name
External links
The Ten-Thousand Families of Surnames from Netor (NETOR纪念:万家姓氏) (in simplified Chinese only)