Liu
刘 · traditionally 劉 — Liú
The 4th most common surname in China
Fourth most common surname in mainland China (Ministry of Public Security 2019 National Name Report, CGTN, 21 January 2020); a 2013 study found 67,700,000 bearers, 5.1% of the population. It is the 8th most common surname in Taiwan and the 30th in South Korea.
Where the name comes from
The character originally named a kind of battle-axe and now survives only as a surname. The classical account makes the ancestor Liu Lei (劉累), a descendant of Emperor Yao's Qi (祁) clan, who was engaged as a dragon-keeper by Kong Jia, the fourteenth king of the Xia dynasty, and was rewarded with a place called Liu as his fief — he took the fief's name as his family name. A second line begins when King Ding of Zhou granted the fiefdom of Liu to his younger brother Ji Jizi, who did the same.
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 刘.
- LiuMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- LauCantonese and Hokkien
- LiewMalaysia
- LieuShanghainese (Wu)
The character
Outside a name, 刘 is an ordinary word meaning to kill, to destroy.
- Strokes
- 6
- Radical
- 刂
- Traditional
- 劉
- As a word
- liú