He
贺 · traditionally 賀 — Hè
The 85th most common surname in China
About 2.74 million people in mainland China, 0.21% 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
He is a surname created by a naming taboo. The line descends from Qing Feng (慶封), a great-grandson of Duke Huan of Qi, whose family used Qing (慶) as their name; in the Eastern Han the official Qing Chun (慶純) had to give it up because 慶 was the personal name of Liu Qing, father of Emperor An of Han. He moved to 賀, a character that also means "to congratulate." A second stream is Xianbei: the disyllabic clan names Helan (賀蘭), Helai (賀賴) and Hedun (賀敦) were clipped to He during the Northern and Southern dynasties.
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 贺.
- HeMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- HoCantonese — Hong Kong and Macau, where it is indistinguishable from 何 Hé
- HorMin Nan — Malaysia and Singapore
- HạVietnamese
The character
Outside a name, 贺 is an ordinary word meaning to congratulate.
- Strokes
- 9
- Radical
- 贝
- Traditional
- 賀
- As a word
- hè
Words built from 贺
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.
Other surnames read “He”
Romanised the same way, but a different character and a different family.