Qian
钱 · traditionally 錢 — Qián
The 94th most common surname in China
"In 2008, Qian was the 96th most common surname in mainland China, shared by 2.2 million people, with the greatest concentration of Qians being in Jiangsu Province" (English Wikipedia)
Where the name comes from
The surname comes from a job, not a place or a person's title. It is traced to a Zhou dynasty official named Fu who worked in the royal treasury, then called the Qianfu (錢府, the "Money Office"); his descendants took the office's name as their clan name. The family later became royal in its own right through Qian Liu (852–932), who founded the Kingdom of Wuyue and ruled from Hangzhou, and whose descendants spread the name across eastern China.
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 钱.
- QianMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- ChinCantonese
- ZeeWu — Shanghai and the surrounding region
The character
Outside a name, 钱 is an ordinary word meaning coin.
- Strokes
- 10
- Radical
- 钅
- Traditional
- 錢
- As a word
- qián
Words built from 钱
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.