Hwang
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Korean; there is one Chinese character for the Hwang surname
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈhwæŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hwang is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country, where it is the 17th most common surname.
- CACanada≈1 in 12K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 19K
- KRSouth Korea1 in 74as 황
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 Hwang 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.
- South Korea (measured from records)
- #979 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 420 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 641 (inferred from the name graph)
697,475 named 황, 2015
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
North Korea, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled 황 in KR South Korea, MO Macao.
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)
Korean; there is one Chinese character for the Hwang surname. Some sources indicate that there are 163 Hwang clans, but only eleven can be positively documented. The founding ancestor of the Hwang clans was named Hwang Nak. He was a Chinese emissary who had been sent on a mission to Vietnam. Instead of going to Vietnam, however, he went to Korea and settled there in AD
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hwang 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | #17 | 697,475as 황 | 1 in 74 | 720K | 황 | 223 |
| CN China | — | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Hwang | 44 |
| KP North Korea | #36 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 641 | 13 | Hwang | 38 |
| US United States | — | 17,900 | 1 in 19K | 19K | Hwang | 420 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Hwang | 149 |
| MO Macao | #55 | ≈700 est. | ≈1 in 881 | — | 황 | 4 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Hwang | 36 |
697,475 people counted by KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants, 2015. 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: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family 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)
Hwang 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.
Each of Hwang Nak’s three sons were founding ancestors of their own clans, and some of their descendants founded additional Hwang clans.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In cdo, Joyous, jocund, glad, frolicsome, gleeful, merry] to rejoice, to be pleased with: COM., "thmmg (A《， glad, pleased j to like; Jmang (hi (A《)， jubilant ； COLL., Jmang (hi fiong^ a happy funeral, as when the deceased has '
as a wordAn Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect
In Filipino, a surname from Mandarin
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Huang Xianfanb. 1899CNnot in their usual nameChinese historian, ethnologist and educator (1899-1982)
- Anna May Wongb. 1905USnot in their usual nameChinese American actress (1905-1961)
- Hwang Kyo-ahnb. 1957KRacting president of South Korea from 2016 to 2017 (born 1957)
- James Wongb. 1959USnot in their usual nameHong Kong and American director, screenwriter and producer
- B. D. Wongb. 1960USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Jensen Huangb. 1963USnot in their usual nameAmerican entrepreneur and businessman; founder and CEO of Nvidia
- Lawrence Wongb. 1972SGnot in their usual namePrime Minister of Singapore since 2024
- Hwang Ui-job. 1992KRSouth Korean association football player
- 황희찬b. 1996KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean association football player (born 1996)
- Hwang In-beomb. 1996KRSouth Korean association football player
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 32 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | KOSIS — 2015 census surnames | 2015 | 720K | #18 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 19K | #1,855 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 18K | #2,017 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,435 |
| KP North Korea | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 13 | #20 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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
- 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
- Where does the name Hwang come from?
- Korean; there is one Chinese character for the Hwang surname. Some sources indicate that there are 163 Hwang clans, but only eleven can be positively documented. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Hwang?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈhwæŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Hwang mean?
- Recorded meaning: Korean; there is one Chinese character for the Hwang surname.
- In which country does Hwang have the most bearers?
- In South Korea, the national register counted about 697 thousand people named 황, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Hwang?
- In the United States, the national register counted 17,900 people named Hwang in 2010, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
- How common is Hwang compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Hwang is the 17th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hwang?
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/hwangThe 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, “Hwang” — the 17th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.