Where the name comes from
Liang was the name of a small state in the Yellow River bend, its capital just south of modern Hancheng in Shaanxi. Chinese sources record that King Ping of Zhou rewarded Qin Zhong's campaigns against the Western Rong by enfeoffing Qin Zhong's younger son, Liang Bo Kang, at Liangshan in Xiayang; the ruling house carried the ancestral surname Ying (嬴), not Liang. Qin absorbed the state in 641 BC, and its people took the name of the state they had 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 梁.
- LiangMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- LeungCantonese — Hong Kong
- LeongCantonese and Hakka — Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines
- NeoHokkien, Teochew and Hainanese — Malaysia
- NioChinese Indonesian
- LiongFuzhou (Hokchiu); also used by Chinese Indonesians
- LeangCambodian Chinese
The character
Outside a name, 梁 is an ordinary word meaning beam of roof.
- Strokes
- 11
- Radical
- 木
- As a word
- liáng
Words built from 梁
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.