Li
黎 — Lí
The 82nd most common surname in China
About 2.88 million people in mainland China, 0.22% of the population, most numerous in Guangdong (Yuan Yida 袁义达 and Qiu Jiaru 邱家儒, 中国四百大姓 / The 400 Most Common Surnames in China, 2013, as tabulated by Wikipedia).
Where the name comes from
The name comes from the state of Li (黎國), a Shang-era vassal in what is now Licheng County, Changzhi, in Shanxi. King Wen of Zhou destroyed it, and the early Zhou court then granted the territory to a descendant of Emperor Yao with the rank of marquis (黎侯); his line took the state's name as their surname. The Jiuli (九黎) tribes along the Yangtze also carried Li as a tribal name, and the Xianbei Suli clan (素黎氏) shortened theirs to Li after settling in north China.
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 黎.
- LiMandarin — mainland China, Taiwan
- LaiCantonese — Hong Kong and Macau
- LêVietnamese — one of the four most common surnames among ethnic Vietnamese
- Loy / LoiMin Nan — Malaysia and Singapore
The character
Outside a name, 黎 is an ordinary word meaning Li ethnic group of Hainan Province.
- Strokes
- 15
- Radical
- 黍
- As a word
- lí
Words built from 黎
The character does ordinary work in the language too. Each of these is a real word you can look up.
Other surnames read “Li”
Romanised the same way, but a different character and a different family.