Shi
石 — Shí
The 61st most common surname in China
About 4.55 million people, 0.34% of the population, ranked 63rd, most numerous in Henan (Yuan Yida and Qiu Jiaru, survey of China's 400 largest surnames, Fuxi Institution, 2013); 61st most common surname in mainland China in the Ministry of Public Security's 2019 national name report.
Where the name comes from
From Shi Que (石碏), a senior minister of the state of Wey in the Spring and Autumn period, of the Ji (姬) royal clan; his grandson Daizhong (駘仲) took his grandfather's name as the clan's own. A quite separate line is Central Asian: Shi (石) was one of the "Nine Surnames of Zhaowu", the Chinese name for the Sogdian city-state of Chach near modern Tashkent, and Sogdians who settled in China under the Sui and Tang took Shi as their surname. Later still, groups including the Jie people and the Xianbei Wushilan (烏石蘭) clan adopted or were given the 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 石.
- ShiMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- ShekCantonese — Hong Kong (government romanisation)
- Sek / Seac / SeakCantonese
- Chioh / CheohHokkien / Min Nan
- Shak / SakHakka
- ThạchSino-Vietnamese — Vietnam
- SeokKorean (석)
- Zah / ZaqWu — Shanghai region
The character
Outside a name, 石 is an ordinary word meaning dry measure for grain equal to ten dou 斗.
- Strokes
- 5
- Radical
- 石
- As a word
- dàn
Words built from 石
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.
Other surnames read “Shi”
Romanised the same way, but a different character and a different family.