Wei
韦 · traditionally 韋 — Wéi
The 63rd most common surname in China
About 3.7 million bearers, 68th nationally (Ministry of Public Security ID-card database, 2008); a 2013 study by the Fuxi Cultural Association put it higher at 4.3 million, or 0.320% of the population, ranked 66th. 63rd on the Ministry of Public Security's 2019 top-100 ranking, published January 2020.
Where the name comes from
The oldest line goes back to Shiwei (豕韦), a small state in what is now Henan that Shao Kang of the Xia dynasty granted to a descendant of Peng Zu; when the state fell its people kept its name. A second, much-repeated line says that after Han Xin was executed on Empress Lü's orders in the early Western Han, his surviving kin fled south to what is now Guangdong and Guangxi and cut the character 韩 (Hán) in half, keeping only the element 韦. A third source is not Han at all: among the Zhuang, 韦 is linked to vaiz, the Zhuang word for water buffalo, taken as a surname by cattle-raising families.
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 韦.
- WeiMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- WaiCantonese — Hong Kong, Macau
- WeeSingapore
The character
Outside a name, 韦 is an ordinary word meaning tanned leather.
- Strokes
- 4
- Radical
- 韦
- Traditional
- 韋
- As a word
- wéi
Other surnames read “Wei”
Romanised the same way, but a different character and a different family.