He
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Chinese: during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 ad), members of the Qing clan needed to change their surname, as Qing was the name of the emperor’s father and so they were not permitted to use this name
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/hi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
He is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CNChina≈1 in 399(inferred from the name graph)
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 1.7K
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 1.9K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than He itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 387 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 399 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,500,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 ad), members of the Qing clan needed to change their surname, as Qing was the name of the emperor’s father and so they were not permitted to use this name. They decided on he, which like qing means ‘celebrate’. In modem Chinese these two characters have been compounded into one word, qinghe, which also means ‘celebrate’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How He is read(measured from records)
He is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Chinese37%
during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 ad), members of the Qing clan needed to change their surname, as Qing was the name of the emperor’s father and so they were not permitted to use this name. They decided on he, which like qing means ‘celebrate’. In modem Chinese these two characters have been compounded into one word, qinghe, which also means ‘celebrate’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from a word meaning ‘and’ in modem Chinese, which was part of the title Xihe ‘astrologer’. Members of the He clan held this hereditary position and adopted their surname from the title.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- English28%
A person who identifies as male, or animal already known or implied.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish5.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses He in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
He 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | #414 | ≈3,500,000 est. | ≈1 in 399 | — | He | 209 |
| US United States | — | 49,817as Ho | 1 in 6.7K | 56K | He | 387 |
| TW Taiwan | #318 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | He | 105 |
| DE Germany | #858 | ≈7,500 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | He | 121 |
| AU Australia | #405 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | 1 | He | 193 |
| HK Hong Kong | #142 | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | He | 75 |
| ES Spain | — | 2,492 | 1 in 20K | 2.5K | He | 58 |
| SG Singapore | #224 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | He | 84 |
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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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)
He is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
‘River’; specifically, the Yellow River.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Akan, displeased with Death, scil. that the preceding three or more children of the same mother did not live; do not ascribe it to men.]
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In men, st. héi, plu. héisia, prayer. Bi héi meningo 1é, Thy prayer is heard. Ti nya héi menia, They heard, 7.e. my prayers are heard
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- He Xiangningb. 1878CNChinese politician and artist (1878-1972)
- Stanley Hob. 1921CNnot in their usual nameMacau gambling magnate (1921–2020)
- He Xiangjianb. 1942CNChinese businessperson (1942-)
- David Hob. 1952USnot in their usual nameTaiwanese-American physician and scientist
- Ho Chingb. 1953SGnot in their usual nameSingaporean businesswoman and Spouse of the Prime Minister of Singapore
- Edmund Ho Hau Wahb. 1955CNnot in their usual nameChinese politician
- Peter Hob. 1975USnot in their usual nameChinese-American actor
- Jiankui Heb. 1984CNChinese biophysicist (1984-)
- Ricky Heb. 1995CACanadian actor
- Siobhán Haugheyb. 1997CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong female swimmer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 52 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.3K | #7,298 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 757 | #7,298 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 81 | #18,642 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 69 | #9,877 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 40 | #15,013 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 He mean, and where does it come from?
- during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 ad), members of the Qing clan needed to change their surname, as Qing was the name of the emperor’s father and so they were not permitted to use this name. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce He?
- A machine transcription gives /hi/ (IPA) for Chinese.
- In which country does He have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.5 million people named He in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled he.
- How common is the name He?
- In Spain, the national register counted 2,492 people named He, about 1 in 20 thousand residents.
- How common is He compared with other names?
- In China, He is the 414th most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about He?
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/heThe 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, “He” — the 414th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.