Tang (/tɑːŋ/;[1]Chinese: 唐,
mandarinPinyin: Táng;
Japanese: 唐/とう/から;
Korean: 당/唐; Cantonese : Tong; Wade–Giles: Dang), is a
Chinese surname. The three languages also have the surname with the same character but different pronunciation/
romanization.[2] In
Korean, it is usually romanized also as Dang. In Japanese, the surname is often romanized as To. In
Vietnamese, it is commonly written as Đường (the anglicized variation is Duong, not be confused with Vietnamese surname
Dương which is also anglicized as Duong). It is pronounced dhɑng[3] in
Middle Chinese, and lhāŋ in
Old Chinese. It is the 64th name on the Hundred Family Surnames poem.[4]
The surname 唐 is also romanized as Tong when transliterated from
Cantonese, and this spelling is common in
Hong Kong and
Macau. In Chinese, 湯 (
Pinyin: Tāng), is also romanized as Tang in English (and also Tong in Cantonese), although it is less common as a surname.
Distribution
Tang is a very common surname in
southern China. Of the top 30 cities in China, 唐 ranked 10th most common surname in the city of
Chongqing.[5]
History
People with this surname mainly have three originations:[6]
From the clan name Tao-Tang (or Taotang, Tao Tang)
Tao-Tang was the clan name for Emperor
Yao's
tribe, so Yao is also known as Tang Yao (唐堯/唐尧) or Tang Fangxun (唐放勛/唐放勋) (Fangxun literally means great meritorious service or contribution). Tao means pottery, which was a very important invention and tool in ancient China; Tang was the ancient name for the place currently is part of central China and the central plain of
Shanxi Province. Yao's tribe combined the names of pottery and their resident place as their clan name . The
descendants of Yao continued using the surname Tang instead of Tao-Tang, probably for simplification purpose.
From the King Tang Shuyu
In the early
Zhou dynasty (Western Zhou), when the
King Cheng of Zhou was still a child, one day he played a game with his young brother
Tang Shuyu. The King Cheng of Zhou cut a
tungleaf to a Jade Gui (Chinese: 玉珪, a kind of
jade article representing authority and trust) shape, sent to Tang Shuyu, and said: you are raised to the
Marquis of Tang (Chinese: 唐侯, Tang here stands for the same place as mentioned above). The
chancellor aside immediately advised the King Cheng of Zhou to choose an auspicious day and make a royal ceremony for establishing Tang Shuyu. The King Cheng of Zhou was surprised, and said, "We are just playing a game and I just made a joke." The chancellor replied: the King cannot make a joke, once the King speaks out,
historians record his words, the loyal ceremony will be held, and the loyal music will be played." Thus Tang Shuyu was raised to the Marquis of Tang, and later became the first
king of
Jin. It's a famous historic event and the origin for the Chinese
phraseTongye Fenghou (Chinese: 桐叶封侯).[7] His offspring continued using Tang as their surname.
Many
native tribes in southern China adopted this surname from Chinese immigrants from
central China throughout the history.
Chinese Muslims
Unlike some other
Hui people who claim foreign ancestry, Hui in Gansu with the surname "Tang" 唐, are descended from Han Chinese who converted to Islam and married Muslim Hui or Dongxiang people, switching their ethnicity and joining the Hui and Dongxiang ethnic groups, both of which are Muslim.
A town called
Tangwangchuan (唐汪川) in
Gansu had a multi ethnic populace, the Tang 唐 and
Wang (surname) 汪 families being the two major families. The Tang and Wang families were originally of non Muslim Han Chinese extraction, but by the 1910s some branches of the families became Muslim by "intermarriage or conversion" while other branches of the families remained non Muslim.[8]
Notable people
Agnes Hsu-Tang, American archaeologist, art historian, and philanthropist
^Classic Chinese from the Records of the Grand Historian - 《史记·晋世家》:“成王与叔虞戏,削桐叶为珪以与叔虞,曰:‘以此封若。’史佚因请择日立叔虞。成王曰:‘吾与之戏耳。’史佚曰:‘天子无戏言’。言则史书之,礼成之,乐歌之。于是遂封叔虞于唐。”
This page lists people with the
surnameTáng. If an
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