Deng

Where the name comes from

Deng was a vassal state ruled by the Man (曼) family, granted by King Wu Ding of Shang to his younger brother Zi Man and sited around modern Dengzhou in Henan (some accounts place it near Xiangfan in Hubei). Its last marquess let King Wen of Chu pass through on his way to attack Shen, ignoring his chancellors' advice to kill him; Wen attacked Deng on his return and conquered it in 678 BC. The survivors took the state's name, and Nanyang remains the clan's ancestral commandery.

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 邓.

• DengMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
• TangCantonese — Hong Kong and Macau
• TengHokkien (Pe̍h-ōe-jī Tēng); also the Wade-Giles spelling used in Taiwan
• ĐặngSino-Vietnamese — one of the top ten surnames in Vietnam

The character

邓 is used almost only as a name — it carries no everyday meaning of its own.

Strokes

4

Radical

阝

Traditional

鄧

As a word

dèng