Gong
龚 · traditionally 龔 — Gōng
The 89th most common surname in China
About 2.64 million people in mainland China, 0.20% of the population, most numerous in Hunan (Yuan Yida 袁义达 and Qiu Jiaru 邱家儒, 中国四百大姓, 2013).
Where the name comes from
Gong is a disguised form of an older surname, Gong (共). The Song genealogical work 古今姓氏辨證 puts it plainly: "their forebears were the Gong (共) clan; fleeing trouble, they added 龍 to make 龔" — literally stacking the character for dragon on top of their own name. The 共 line itself is traced to Gonggong (共工), Emperor Yao's minister of waterworks who was later deified as the water god, and to the ancient state of Gong in present-day Henan; a parallel branch added 水 instead and became Hong (洪), which is why 共, 恭, 龔 and 洪 are held to share one root.
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 龚.
- GongMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- KungCantonese — Hong Kong
- KongCantonese — Macau; also Malaysia and Singapore
- KiongMin Nan (Zhangzhou) — Malaysia and Singapore
- CungVietnamese
The character
Outside a name, 龚 is an ordinary word meaning to give, to present; reverential.
- Strokes
- 11
- Radical
- 龙
- Traditional
- 龔
- As a word
- gōng