Zhang (surname)

Zhang (surname)

Zhang is the pinyin romanization of the very common Chinese surname written 张 in simplified characters and 張 traditionally. It is spoken in the first tone: Zhāng.

It is also the pinyin romanization of the less-common surname 章 (also Zhāng).

張 was listed 24th in the famous Song-era Hundred Family Surnames. Today, it is one of the most common surnames in the world and 张 was listed by the People's Republic of China's National Citizen ID Information System as the third-most-common surname in mainland China in April 2007, with 87.50 million bearers. A commonly cited but erroneous factoid in the 1990 Guinness Book of Records listed it as the world's most common surname, but no comprehensive information from China was available at the time and more recent editions have not repeated the claim.