A Chinese compound surname is a
Chinese surname
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicization, Sinicized ethnic groups in Greater China, Korea, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Written Chinese names begin with surnames, ...
using more than one
character. Many of these
compound surnames derive from
Zhou dynasty 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 ��馬/司马 Zhuge ��葛/诸葛 Situ ��徒 Xiahou ��侯 Huangfu ��甫 and
Huyan ��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. Lists below are arranged alphabetically by their Mandarin
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
spellings.
Native Han compound surnames
Double-barrelled surnames
Double-barrelled surname () 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 (), 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
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Chinese surname
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicization, Sinicized ethnic groups in Greater China, Korea, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Written Chinese names begin with surnames, ...
*
Japanese surname
*
Korean surname
*
Vietnamese name
References
External links
The Ten-Thousand Families of Surnames from Netor (NETOR纪念:万家姓氏) (in simplified Chinese only)
{{101–200 Most Common Family Names in mainland China