Where the name comes from
One line takes its name from a fief called Pan, north of the Shaanxi region, granted to Ji Sun of the Zhou royal house. A second descends from a cadet branch of the House of Mi (芈), the ruling clan of Chu during the Spring and Autumn period, whose ancestor Pan Chong (潘崇) backed Prince Shangchen's seizure of the Chu throne and served as his regent and adviser. A third stream is Taiwanese: plains indigenous families took Pan during Sinicisation, as a modification of the character 番 (fān) by which they had been officially designated.
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 潘.
- PanMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- Poon / PunCantonese — Hong Kong
- PunCantonese — Macau
- PhuaHokkien — Singapore
- Phua / Pua / PhangMalaysia
- PhoaⁿHokkien (Pe̍h-ōe-jī)
- PhanHakka; also the standard Vietnamese form
- Sae-Phua / Sae-Pua / Sae-PoonThailand
The character
Outside a name, 潘 is an ordinary word meaning a river that flows into the Han.
- Strokes
- 15
- Radical
- 氵
- As a word
- pān