Wang

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Wang is a surname, most frequently recorded in China, where it is the 4th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Chinese, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (i) from a Chinese clan name meaning literally ‘prince’; (ii) ‘person from Wang’, the name of various states or areas in China.

rarermore common
  • CNChina1 in 23◐
  • HKHong Kong1 in 336
  • SGSingapore1 in 529

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈181K ●

across 13 countries

#5 ●

of 21M surnames

3 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
474 ●

1.6M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.1K ◐

Norway

Spellings & scripts●

WangLatin · English●103M records
ВанCyrillic · Russian●27K records
왕서Hangul · Korean●33 records

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Ван in RU Russia, UA Ukraine, KZ Kazakhstan, Ванг in NO Norway, SE Sweden and Van in ZA South Africa.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

(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 8 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Wang is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China#4101,931,40594K rec.——Wang244
AU Australia#33117,681109K rec.—9Wang246
US United States#191111,3711.1M rec.1 in 3K170KWang474
TW Taiwan#11279,40636K rec.——Wang215
GB United Kingdom#30862,35945K rec.——Wang170
CA Canada#6352,55248K rec.—4Wang215
KR South Korea#8525,58115K rec.1 in 2K27KWang113
DE Germany#34322,30720K rec.—1Wang194
SG Singapore#1818,22917K rec.——Wang164
MY Malaysia#22517,07012K rec.—2.4KWang97
RU Russia—15,67222K rec.—#2,728Ван117
ES Spain—15,616△5.5K rec.1 in 3.2K16KWang102

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English103M98%
  • Chinese922K1%
  • 224K1%
  • Spanish131K1%
  • Korean67K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English102,513,56798%
Chinese922,1471%
223,9351%
Spanish130,8191%
Korean66,6221%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Wang is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname282K records spelled Wang5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, China, United Kingdom, Hong Kong

    Also written Wáng, Wång, Wa̅ng, Wāng

  • Spanish surname264K records spelled Wang4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, United States, Argentina, China

    Also written Wäńg, Wáng, Wång

  • Danish surname60K records spelled Wang7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, Denmark, United States, China

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Norwegian Bokmål

    Also written Wång, Wäng

95 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Wang 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 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 English, An, US computer engineer

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In German, from ON. Wang 'grassy slope'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In English, 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…

  • In 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…

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.

Over time●

0204060801940196019802000202063 · 2004

Show as table
Wang in INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024), Ecuador, 1928–2024
Yearrecords
19281
19291
19311
19351
19391
19482
19491
19501
19511
19521
19533
19542
19553
19561
19571
19585
19595
19601
19615
19624
19635
19648
19655
19667
19677
196811
196911
197010
19716
197217
197311
19747
19758
19768
197711
197819
197916
198013
198114
198228
198321
198410
198529
198625
198723
198823
198911
199013
199112
199215
199318
199417
199515
199615
199716
199829
199930
200022
200117
200221
200342
200463
200525
200619
200729
200856
200939
201022
201122
201221
201320
201415
201510
201626
201725
201816
20197
20205
20215
20227
20238
20249

EC INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) — 82 years between 1928–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Wang Jingwei, b. 1883Vera Wang, b. 1949Wang Yi, b. 1953Wong Kar-wai, b. 1958Wang Leehom, b. 1976Wang Zhizhi, b. 1979Wang Xin, b. 1985Yuja Wang, b. 1987Jackson Wang, b. 1994Tank Man, b. 2000
  • 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).

Evidence●

Attested in 70 sources across 39 countries.

Official registers attesting Wang
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020170K#151
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010110K#282
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200068K#438
KR South KoreaKOSIS — 2015 census surnames201527K#65
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—16K#341
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—16K#341
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—5K#157
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—3.9K—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—3.2K#318
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—3K#1,330
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20252.5K—
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20241.9K#518

Reference works 6

  • 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)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 281 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Wang?
We estimate roughly 181 thousand people bear Wang (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
In which country does Wang have the most bearers?
Wang is most frequently recorded in China, where it is most often spelled wang.
How common is Wang compared with other names?
In China, Wang is the 4th most common surname of 134,008 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Wang mean?
Recorded meaning: (i) from a Chinese clan name meaning literally ‘prince’; (ii) ‘person from Wang’, the name of various states or areas in China.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/wang

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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 4th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Wang parses inside a full name →