Chang (surname)

Chang (常)
Family name
Region of origin	China

Chang (/tʃɑːŋ/) is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname 常 (Cháng). It was listed 80th among the Song-era Hundred Family Surnames.

"Chang" is also the Wade-Giles romanization of two Chinese surnames written Zhang in pinyin: one extremely common and written 張 in traditional characters and 张 in simplified characters, and another quite rare and written as 章 in both systems. There is also a rare case of 鄭 in Hong Kong written as Chang as well. For full details on them, see the "Zhang" 章 and "Zheng" 鄭 article. In Macao, this is the spelling of the surname "Zeng" 曾.

Romanization

常 is romanized as Ch'ang in Wade-Giles, although the apostrophe is often omitted in practice. It is romanized as Soeng and Sheung in Cantonese; Seong and Siông in Minnan languages; and Sioh in Teochew. It is occasionally romanized Sōng and Thōng as well.

It is the source of the Vietnamese surname Thường. The Korean surname romanized as Sang (상). In Japanese, it is romanized as Jō.

Distribution

常 was unlisted among the most recent rankings of the 100 most common Chinese surnames in mainland China and on Taiwan based on household registrations in 2007, although the Ministry of Public Security in 2008 listed is as the 87th most common surname in China based on its database of National Identity Cards, shared by at least 2.4 million Chinese citizens.^[2] It was the 94th-most-common surname during the 1982 Chinese census.

张 is the third-most-common surname in mainland China, making up 6.83% of the population of the People's Republic of China, although there it is official rendered into the Latin alphabet as Zhang.^[3] Its Traditional Chinese variant 張 is the fourth-most-common surname in Taiwan, making up 5.26% of the population of the Republic of China.^[4]

"Chang" is a common Chinese surname in the United States, ranked 687th among all surnames during the 1990 census and 424th during the year 2000 census.^[5] It was ranked 11th among all surnames held by Asians and Pacific Islanders and 6th among all surnames held by Chinese Americans in 2000, well ahead of the pinyin variant "Zhang".^[6]

Origin

The pronunciation of Chang in Old Chinese has been reconstructed as *daŋ. Its original meaning was "constant" or "often". By the time of Middle Chinese, the pronunciation had shifted to Dzyang.^[1]

List of persons with the surname

Fictional Characters

• Chang, a henchman in the James Bond film Moonraker played by the Franco-Japanese aikido instructor Toshiro Suga
• Cho Chang, a character in the Harry Potter novels officially Sinified as 张秋 (Zhang Qiu), sometimes alternately claimed by Cantonese Caos or even Korean Chos
• Leia Chang, a character in the television show Degrassi: The Next Generation played by the Chinese-Canadian actress Judy Jiao
• Mike Chang, a Chinese-American character in the TV series Glee, played by Chinese-Latin American actor Harry Shum Junior
• Tina Cohen-Chang, a Chinese-American character in the TV series Glee, played by Korean-American actress Jenna Ushkowitz
• Chang Chong-Chen, a character in the The Adventures of Tintin series, inspired by Hergé's real-life friend Zhang Chongren

See also

• Zhang (surname)
• List of common Chinese surnames

References