Where the name comes from
Chinese Wikipedia's principal line traces the surname to Gongshu Duan (共叔段), younger son of Duke Wu of Zheng and brother of Duke Zhuang. Their mother obtained for him the city of Jing — at the time the second largest city in Zheng and an important fortress — then urged him to revolt; Duke Zhuang raised an army and defeated him at Yan, north of present-day Yanling County, Henan, in the summer of 722 BC, and his descendants took Duan as their surname. Other lines come from the fief of Duangan (段干), held by Laozi's son Zong and later associated with the Confucian scholar Duangan Mu, whose descendants shortened the compound name to Duan, and from Xianbei and Bai families.
The character
Outside a name, 段 is an ordinary word meaning paragraph.
- Strokes
- 9
- Radical
- 殳
- As a word
- duàn
Words built from 段
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.