Where the name comes from
Three classical derivations are recorded. Two are ancient states named Xiang — one in present-day Shandong, destroyed early in the Spring and Autumn period, and one in present-day Henan, destroyed in the late Western Zhou — whose people took the state name as their surname. The third comes from Xiang Fu (向父), the style name of Bi, a son of Duke Huan of the State of Song, whose descendants used the first character. Chinese sources record a separate Tujia origin in which the name developed out of the surname 相, 向 and 相 having been alternative transcriptions of the same sound.
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 向.
- XiangMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- HeungCantonese — Hong Kong
The character
Outside a name, 向 is an ordinary word meaning towards.
- Strokes
- 6
- Radical
- 口
- As a word
- xiàng
Words built from 向
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.