Ren
任 — Rén
The 49th most common surname in China
4.2 million bearers and the 59th most common surname in China as of 2008, rising to 49th in mainland China by 2019 (English Wikipedia, "Ren (surname)", accessed September 2026). It is listed 58th in the Hundred Family Surnames.
Where the name comes from
The Zuo Zhuan states that the Ren descend from Fuxi's surname Fēng (風); the archaic form of the name, 妊, is counted among the Eight Great Surnames of Chinese antiquity, while 任 is the common modern graph. Baidu Baike records a parallel line from Yuyang, a son of the Yellow Emperor (said by some to be a son of Zhuanxu, the Yellow Emperor's grandson), enfeoffed at Ren — the old city lay northwest of present-day Renqiu, Hebei, and later moved southeast of Jining, Shandong, where a Feng-surnamed State of Ren stood and its people took the state's name.
The same name, spelled differently
A Chinese surname is a character, not a spelling. The Latin letters on a passport come from whichever dialect the name was written down from — so these are all 任.
- RenMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- Yam / YumCantonese
- JenWade–Giles (e.g. singer Richie Jen, novelist Gish Jen)
- Im / YimKorean — the 맡길 임 clan, hanja 任
The character
Outside a name, 任 is an ordinary word meaning to assign.
- Strokes
- 6
- Radical
- 亻
- As a word
- rèn
Words built from 任
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.