Where the name comes from
Three separate lines feed this surname. One runs from Luzhong (陸終), a great-great-grandson of the legendary emperor Zhuanxu; another from Luhun (陸渾), a Rong tribal state in what is now Song County, Henan, annexed by the state of Jin in 525 BC, after which many Luhun people took Lu as their name. The third is the Tian house of Qi: King Xuan of Qi enfeoffed his youngest son Tian Tong at Lu (陸), and Tian Tong's descendants adopted it.
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 陆.
- LuMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- LukCantonese — Hong Kong (government romanisation)
- LokCantonese
- LekTeochew
- LụcSino-Vietnamese — Vietnam
- Yuk / RyukKorean (육 / 륙)
The character
Outside a name, 陆 is an ordinary word meaning six (banker's anti-fraud numeral).
- Strokes
- 7
- Radical
- 阝
- Traditional
- 陸
- As a word
- liù
Words built from 陆
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.
Other surnames read “Lu”
Romanised the same way, but a different character and a different family.