Xiong
熊 — Xióng
The 69th most common surname in China
About 3.6 million bearers, 72nd nationally (Ministry of Public Security ID-card database, 2008 ranking of China's 300 commonest surnames); 69th on the Ministry's 2019 top-100 ranking, published January 2020.
Where the name comes from
The name belongs to the royal house of Chu. It is traced to Yuxiong (鬻熊), a tutor of King Wen of Zhou in the 11th century BC, whose descendants took Xiong as their clan name after Zhou's victory over Shang around 1046 BC; they ruled Chu until Qin destroyed it in the Warring States period. The family's ancestral name was Mi (芈), and modern scholarship suggests that character was used to transcribe a Kam–Tai word also meaning "bear" — so 熊, literally "bear", may be a translation of a non-Chinese dynastic name.
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 熊.
- XiongMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- Hung / HongCantonese — Hong Kong
- HimHokkien
- YoongHakka — Malaysia
- HùngVietnamese
- XyoojHmong — Hmong communities in Laos, Thailand and the United States
- HsiungWade-Giles — Taiwan
The character
Outside a name, 熊 is an ordinary word meaning bear.
- Strokes
- 14
- Radical
- 灬
- As a word
- xióng
Words built from 熊
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.