Kong
孔 — Kǒng
The 98th most common surname in China
Around 2.1 million people in China, about 0.23% of the population (2002 figure, English Wikipedia); Chinese Ministry of Public Security data for 2009 gives approximately 2.7 million, ranking it 83rd
Where the name comes from
The surname descends from the Zi (子) clan of the Shang royal house. Its ancestor is Kongfu Jia (孔父嘉), a senior minister of the State of Song during the Zhou; after the family fled to the State of Lu, his son adopted Kong as the clan name. Chinese accounts explain the graph itself as a fusion of Zi (子) with Yi (乙). Confucius was a seventh-generation descendant of Kongfu Jia.
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 孔.
- KongMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- HungCantonese — Hong Kong
- KhổngVietnamese
- Gong (공)Korean
The character
Outside a name, 孔 is an ordinary word meaning hole.
- Strokes
- 4
- Radical
- 子