Xia
夏 — Xià
The 65th most common surname in China
About 3.7 million bearers, 66th nationally (Ministry of Public Security ID-card database, 2008 ranking of China's 300 commonest surnames); 65th on the Ministry's 2019 top-100 ranking, published January 2020.
Where the name comes from
The main line descends from Yu the Great and the Si (姒) clan of the Xia dynasty: Yu's descendant Donglou Gong was enfeoffed at the state of Qi, and branches of that house later took the dynasty's name 夏 as a surname. A separate and quite specific line comes from Chen: Duke Xuan of Chen's youngest son was Gongzi Xia, and his grandson took the grandfather's name as a clan name, becoming Xia Zhengshu. A third small line is claimed by descendants of Confucius's disciple Bu Shang, better known by his courtesy name Zixia (子夏).
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 夏.
- XiaMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- HaCantonese — Hong Kong, Macau
- HsiaWade-Giles — Taiwan
- HaKorean 하
- HạVietnamese
- CheaCambodian Chinese
The character
Outside a name, 夏 is an ordinary word meaning summer.
- Strokes
- 10
- Radical
- 夊
- As a word
- xià
Words built from 夏
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.