Chen
陈 · traditionally 陳 — Chén
The 5th most common surname in China
63.3 million registered in mainland China (Ministry of Public Security, January 2019), and around 98 million worldwide
Where the name comes from
Chen comes from a place, not a person: the State of Chen, in what is now Huaiyang County, Henan. Its founding duke was enfeoffed there as a descendant of Emperor Shun, one of China's legendary sage-kings. When the state of Chu absorbed Chen in 479 BC, its people kept the name of the country they had just lost.
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 陈.
- ChenMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- ChanCantonese — Hong Kong, Macau
- TanHokkien and Teochew — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia
- ChinHakka and Taishanese
The character
Outside a name, 陈 is an ordinary word meaning to lay out.
- Strokes
- 7
- Radical
- 阝
- Traditional
- 陳
- As a word
- chén
Words built from 陈
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.