Where the name comes from
The name comes from the small state of Zeng (鄫) in what is now Lanling County (formerly Cangshan County), Shandong, which the Xia king Shao Kang is said to have granted to his son Qu Lie. Ju annexed the state in 567 BC and its crown prince, Wu, fled to the state of Lu, where he dropped the 邑 radical from 鄫 and wrote his name 曾. The character meant "high" or "add" in ancient Chinese.
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 曾.
- ZengMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- TsangCantonese — Hong Kong
- ChangCantonese — Macau
- ChanHokkien (Pe̍h-ōe-jī) — Singapore
- ChengFuzhou dialect — Sarawak, Malaysia
- CenHakka
- TjanIndonesia
- TăngVietnamese
- Tseng / TzengWade–Giles and MPS II — Taiwan
The character
Outside a name, 曾 is an ordinary word meaning once.
- Strokes
- 12
- Radical
- 曰
- As a word
- céng
Words built from 曾
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.