Jin
金 — Jīn
The 62nd most common surname in China
About 3.8 million bearers, 64th nationally (Ministry of Public Security ID-card database, 2008 ranking of China's 300 commonest surnames); 62nd on the Ministry's 2019 top-100 ranking, published January 2020.
Where the name comes from
The best-documented historical source is Jin Midi (134–86 BC), heir of the Xiongnu Prince of Xiutu, who was taken into imperial service as a boy after his father's death and rose to be a secondary regent of the Western Han; Emperor Wu granted him the surname 金 ("gold") because the Prince of Xiutu had used golden statues to worship heaven. A legendary line traces the name to Shaohao, retitled Jintian (金天) after a golden phoenix appeared at his installation, some of whose descendants kept Jin and dropped the rest. Later adoptions layered on top: the Kaifeng Jews, granted 金 by an unnamed Song emperor, and the Qing imperial Aisin Gioro clan, who took Jin after the dynasty fell because "Aisin" is Manchu for gold.
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 金.
- JinMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- KamCantonese — Hong Kong, Macau
- KimHokkien and Hakka — Singapore, Malaysia
- KinFuzhou dialect (Eastern Min) — Fuzhou, Fujian
- KimKorean 김 — the same hanja 金
- KimVietnamese
- Chinolder Mandarin romanisation
The character
Outside a name, 金 is an ordinary word meaning gold.
- Strokes
- 8
- Radical
- 金
- As a word
- jīn
Words built from 金
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.