Huang or Hwang
黄 · traditionally 黃 — Huáng
The 7th most common surname in China
Seventh most common surname in mainland China and the most common surname in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (Ministry of Public Security 2019 National Name Report, Xinhua, 20 January 2020); a 2013 study found 32,600,000 bearers, 2.45% of the population. The 2015 South Korean census recorded 697,171 people with the Korean form Hwang, ranked 16th.
Where the name comes from
The surname is the name of the ancient state of Huang (黃國). Tradition traces the line to Bo Yi, who helped Emperor Shun and Yu the Great control the Great Flood and received the surname Ying (嬴) in the early Xia period; his eldest son Da Lian is named as the founder of the Huang kingdom. A parallel account has Emperor Yao rename the land of Can'hu as the State of Huang and bestow the surname Huang on Hui Lian. The Dongyi "Huang Yi" (黃夷) tribe is also recorded as taking Huang as it dispersed across 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 黄.
- Huang or HwangMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- WongCantonese
- NgHokkien and Southern Min — Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines
- OoiHokkien — Penang and nearby Malaysian states
- OeiZhangzhou and Xiamen dialects — Indonesia
- UySouthern Min — the Philippines
- WeeHainanese and Southern Min
- BongHakka
The character
Outside a name, 黄 is an ordinary word meaning yellow.
- Strokes
- 11
- Radical
- 黄
- Traditional
- 黃
- As a word
- huáng
Words built from 黄
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.