王
surname · Han script
Meaning: from royal descendants and several ancestral lineages; especially descendants of King Ling of Zhou's son Prince Jin
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/wɑŋ³⁵/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
王 is a surname written in the Han script, with more bearers in Taiwan than in any other country.
- TWTaiwan1 in 25(measured from records)
- MOMacao1 in 41
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Taiwan (measured from records)
- Sources
- 64 (measured from records)
- 1 in 25 (inferred from the name graph)
955,035 people, 2023
Highest-authority source
Taiwan
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from royal descendants and several ancestral lineages; especially descendants of King Ling of Zhou's son Prince Jin
Sources 1
- 新华姓氏词典 (Xinhua dictionary of Chinese surnames)
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
王 counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
955,035 people counted by RIS/MOI — Household Registration Statistics (surnames + given names), 2023. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: MPS — 全国姓名报告 surname frequency (百家姓 top-101); RIS/MOI — Household Registration Statistics (surnames + given names); 全國姓名統計分析 — National Name Statistical Analysis; siikamiika/japanese-family-names — myoji-yurai surname dataset; DSEC Macau — NameStatistic surname sweep (2025 register lookup); DSEC Macau — Name Statistics (百家姓 surnames + common given names). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
王 is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Chinese, from royal and noble descendants and later adopted or granted the surname 王
as a name新华姓氏词典 (Xinhua dictionary of Chinese surnames)
In Chinese, Originates from Ji, Gui, Zi, and other lineages; also adopted by various ethnic groups and later surname changes.
as a name中国姓氏大辞典 (Chinese Surnames Mega-Dictionary)
In Chinese, Multiple origins: chiefly from Ji clan; also from minority and foreign lineages, later adopted as Wang.
as a name中国姓氏大辞典 (Chinese Surnames Mega-Dictionary)
In Chinese, king or monarch; best or strongest of its type; grand; great; (literary) (of a monarch) to reign over (a kingdom)
as a wordMDBG Chinese Dictionary (CC-CEDICT) — surname sense
In Chinese, king; monarch
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 10 sources across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | MPS — 全国姓名报告 surname frequency (百家姓 top-101) | 2021 | 102M | #1 |
| CN China | ChineseNames: household-registered population — surnames + given names (no time axis) | — | 88M | #1 |
| TW Taiwan | 全國姓名統計分析 — National Name Statistical Analysis | 2023 | 955K | #6 |
| TW Taiwan | RIS/MOI — Household Registration Statistics (surnames + given names) | 2023 | 955K | #6 |
| MO Macao | DSEC Macau — Name Statistics (百家姓 surnames + common given names) | — | 15K | #13 |
| MO Macao | DSEC Macau — NameStatistic surname sweep (2025 register lookup) | — | 15K | #13 |
| JP Japan | siikamiika/japanese-family-names — myoji-yurai surname dataset | — | 3.3K | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name 王 mean, and where does it come from?
- from royal descendants and several ancestral lineages; especially descendants of King Ling of Zhou's son Prince Jin Recorded by 新华姓氏词典 (Xinhua dictionary of Chinese surnames).
- How do you pronounce 王?
- A machine transcription gives /wɑŋ³⁵/ (IPA) for Chinese.
- What are other forms of the name 王?
- In the etymology graph, វាំង is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does 王 have the most bearers?
- In Taiwan, the national register counted about 955 thousand people named 王, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is 王 most common?
- 王 is densest in Taiwan, where the national register counts about 1 in 25 people carrying it.
- How common is the name 王?
- In Taiwan, the national register counted 955,035 people named 王 in 2023, about 1 in 25 residents.
- How common is 王 compared with other names?
- In Japan, 王 is the 375th most common surname of 142,159 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about 王?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%E7%8E%8BThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “王” — the 375th most common surname in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.