The Shan surname (单 / 單)
Shan (单 / 單, Shàn) is about 1.0 million people in mainland China (2013), the 151st most common surname; the province with the most Shans is Jiangsu.
How do you pronounce the surname 单?
As a surname, 单 is pronounced Shàn in Mandarin (written Shan without tone marks).
How is Shan written in Chinese?
Simplified Chinese: 单. Traditional Chinese (Taiwan, Hong Kong, most overseas genealogies): 單.
How common is the Shan surname?
According to Yuan Yida and Qiu Jiaru's study of the 400 most common Chinese surnames (2013), about 1.0 million people in mainland China are named Shan — 0.076% of the population, ranking 151st.
Where in China is the Shan surname most common?
According to the same 2013 study, the province with the most people named Shan is Jiangsu.
Is Shan in the Hundred Family Surnames?
Yes — 单 is number 182 in the Hundred Family Surnames (Baijiaxing), a Song-dynasty primer. Its order reflects the rhyme of the text, not population.
What are the other English spellings of Shan?
The same Chinese surname is spelled differently by region and era — check all of them when searching immigration or overseas records:
- Hanyu Pinyin (Mainland China): Shan
- Wade–Giles (Taiwan, older usage): Shan
- Cantonese (Hong Kong, overseas): Jyutping daan1
- Korean: 단
- Vietnamese: Đơn
How do I build a Shan family tree?
Start with your own branch: record the ancestors you are sure of, then parents, siblings and descendants, generation by generation, with dates, spouses, migrations and burial places. Then invite relatives to fill in their own branches.
The KinTraces genealogy workbench lets a family build a Shan genealogy together online — relatives claim their own entries, adoptions and dual heirship are recorded on both sides, every change is logged, and the tree can be printed as a traditional Chinese genealogy (vertical register, Su or Ou style, pagoda chart) or a Western Register / Pedigree, or exported as GEDCOM.
What are Shan generation names (zibei)?
Many Chinese lineages share a generation poem: each generation takes one character from it in their given names, so cousins of the same generation share a character. Different Shan branches use different poems — there can be dozens for one surname — so a poem from another branch cannot simply be borrowed.
The most reliable source is your branch's own genealogy; otherwise, collect names from elders, gravestones and ancestral halls, look for the shared character in each generation, and compare with genealogies from the same ancestral place.
Surnames ranked nearby
Other common surnames in Jiangsu
Sources: 2013 population figures, ranks and top provinces from Yuan Yida and Qiu Jiaru, The 400 Most Common Chinese Surnames (2013), as compiled in the English Wikipedia article "List of common Chinese surnames" (CC BY-SA 4.0); 2020 ranks from the Ministry of Public Security's 2020 national name report; Baijiaxing order from the Wikisource text.