Wang
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) from a Chinese clan name meaning literally ‘prince’; (ii) ‘person from Wang’, the name of various states or areas in China
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/wæŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wang is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 19th most common surname.
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 45(inferred from the name graph)
- CNChina≈1 in 71
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 411
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 Wang 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)
- #428 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 531 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 45 (inferred from the name graph)
≈20,000,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Taiwan, 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)
(i) from a Chinese clan name meaning literally ‘prince’; (ii) ‘person from Wang’, the name of various states or areas in China.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Wang is read(measured from records)
Wang is one spelling over 2 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.
- English41%
(i) from a Chinese clan name meaning literally ‘prince’; (ii) ‘person from Wang’, the name of various states or areas in China.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
An, US computer engineer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Chinese: kingly
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Chinese36%
Kingly
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
Wang 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 | #225 | ≈20,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 71 | — | Wang | 275 |
| TW Taiwan | #95 | ≈530,000 est. | ≈1 in 45 | — | Wang | 227 |
| US United States | #187 | 111,371as Wong | 1 in 3K | 170K | Wang | 531 |
| MY Malaysia | #153 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 2.4K | Wang | 102 |
| AU Australia | #35 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 840 | 9 | Wang | 264 |
| HK Hong Kong | #34 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 411 | 1K | Wang | 139 |
| ES Spain | — | 15,616 | 1 in 3.2K | 16K | Wang | 105 |
| SG Singapore | #19 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 565 | — | Wang | 177 |
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; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); This page contains a database of Hong Konger surnames and first names categorized by frequency and gender, published by. 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)
Wang is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Toponymic surname from place names on mhd. wang 'grasbewachsener Hang, Feld, Aue'; 808 tokens, widespread across Germany, mostly Chinese foreign name otherwise.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
In German, from ON. Wang 'grassy slope'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
- Wang Jingweib. 1883CNChinese politician, leader of Wang Jingwei regime (1883-1944)
- Vera Wangb. 1949USAmerican fashion designer (born 1939)
- Wang Yib. 1953CNChinese diplomat leader, Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office since 2023
- Wong Kar-waib. 1958CNnot in their usual nameChinese-born Hong Kong filmmaker (born 1958)
- Wang Leehomb. 1976USTaiwanese singer, songwriter, actor
- Wang Zhizhib. 1979CNChinese basketball player (born 1979)
- Wang Xinb. 1985CNChinese badminton player
- Yuja Wangb. 1987USChinese pianist
- Jackson Wangb. 1994CNChinese rapper and singer (born 1994)
- Tank Manb. 2000CNnot in their usual nameanonymous man who stood in front of a column of Chinese tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests
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 74 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 170K | #151 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 110K | #282 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 68K | #438 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 16K | #341 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 16K | #341 |
Reference works 8
- 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 given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Wang mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from a Chinese clan name meaning literally ‘prince’; (ii) ‘person from Wang’, the name of various states or areas in China. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Wang?
- In Spain, the national register counted 15,616 people named Wang, about 1 in 3.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Wang compared with other names?
- In China, Wang is the 225th most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Wang?
- A machine transcription gives /wæŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Wang have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 20 million people named Wang in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wang.
What do you want to know about Wang?
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/wangThe 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, “Wang” — the 225th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.