Ng
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Initialism of newsgroup; also NG
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɛŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ng is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 3rd most common surname.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 48(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 143
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 144
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 482 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 48 (inferred from the name graph)
≈530,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
1d:lJ1;TIRnm in South China in 1866, Ng Poon Chew followed relatives to CA and rose to prominence as a promoter of Chinese culture among Americans and of American ingenuity among the Chinese. He was a 32d-degree Mason, the first Chinese in CA to become a Shriner, and the most prominent bearer of the name Ng Poon, which began appearing on the west coast in the 19th century.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Ng is read(measured from records)
Ng 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.
- English62%
Initialism of newsgroup; also NG.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Malay18%
a Chinese Indonesian surname from Hakka.
as a wordrecorded as Indonesiankaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Chinese5.5%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Ng in Chinese.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Ng 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 | — | ≈530,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Ng | 98 |
| MY Malaysia | #26 | ≈230,000 est. | ≈1 in 144 | 1.7K | Ng | 193 |
| HK Hong Kong | #15 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 48 | 391 | Ng | 175 |
| SG Singapore | #3 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 143 | — | Ng | 236 |
| US United States | #946 | 31,210 | 1 in 11K | 33K | Ng | 482 |
| AU Australia | #163 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | 1 | Ng | 244 |
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; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); 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)
Ng is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
1d:lJ1;TIRnm in South China in 1866, Ng Poon Chew followed relatives to CA and rose to prominence as a promoter of Chinese culture among Americans and of American ingenuity among the Chinese. He was a 32d-degree Mason, the first Chinese in CA to become a Shriner, and the most prominent bearer of the name Ng Poon, which began appearing on the west coast in the 19th century.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Esperanto, initialism of ne gravas (“it doesn't matter, it's not important”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In kne, The sixteenth letter of the Kankanaey alphabet, called endyi and written in the Latin script.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Welsh, The eleventh letter of the Welsh alphabet, called eng and written in the Latin script.
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)
- Plaek Phibunsongkhramb. 1897THnot in their usual namePrime Minister of Thailand, 1938–44 and 1948–57 (1897–1964)
- 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)
- Goh Chok Tongb. 1941SGnot in their usual name2nd Prime Minister of Singapore from 1990 to 2004
- John Woob. 1946CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong film director, screenwriter and film producer
- John Loneb. 1952USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- B. D. Wongb. 1960USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Jensen Huangb. 1963USnot in their usual nameAmerican entrepreneur and businessman; founder and CEO of Nvidia
- Daniel Wub. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Kris Wub. 1990CNnot in their usual nameChinese-born Canadian rapper and convicted sex criminal (1990–)
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 41 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 33K | #1,060 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 31K | #1,125 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 28K | #1,168 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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
- Where does the name Ng come from?
- 1d:lJ1;TIRnm in South China in 1866, Ng Poon Chew followed relatives to CA and rose to prominence as a promoter of Chinese culture among Americans and of American ingenuity among the Chinese. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Ng?
- A machine transcription gives /ɛŋ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Ng mean?
- In English, Initialism of newsgroup; also NG.
- In which country does Ng have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 530 thousand people named Ng in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ng.
- How common is the name Ng?
- In the United States, the national register counted 31,210 people named Ng in 2010, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How common is Ng compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Ng is the 3rd most common surname of 78,292 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ng?
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/ngThe 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, “Ng” — the 3rd most common surname in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.