Bai
白 — Bái
The 70th most common surname in China
About 2.8 million bearers, 79th nationally (Ministry of Public Security ID-card database, 2008 ranking of China's 300 commonest surnames); 70th on the Ministry's 2019 top-100 ranking, published January 2020.
Where the name comes from
Several distinct lines converge on the character for "white". The best known is Bai Gongsheng (白公胜), grandson of King Ping of Chu through the exiled crown prince Jian, who held the fief of Bai and whose descendants kept its name. Qin supplies two more: a prince named Bai, son of Duke Wu of Qin, and Baiyi Bing, one of Duke Mu's generals. Others took the name from Baizhou, a Tang prefecture, and non-Han families adopted it too — Mongols translating Chagan ("white"), several Manchu clans, and the ancient people of Kucha in the Western Regions.
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 白.
- BaiMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- PakCantonese — Hong Kong, Macau
- Peh / PekHokkien — Singapore, Malaysia
- PhakHakka
- Baek / PaikKorean 백
- BạchVietnamese
- PaiWade-Giles — Taiwan
The character
Outside a name, 白 is an ordinary word meaning white.
- Strokes
- 5
- Radical
- 白
- As a word
- bái
Words built from 白
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.