The Shen surname (沈)
Shen (沈, Shěn) is about 5.5 million people in mainland China (2013), the 49th most common surname; the province with the most Shens is Jiangsu.
How do you pronounce the surname 沈?
As a surname, 沈 is pronounced Shěn in Mandarin (written Shen without tone marks).
How is Shen written in Chinese?
It is written 沈 in both simplified and traditional Chinese.
How common is the Shen surname?
According to Yuan Yida and Qiu Jiaru's study of the 400 most common Chinese surnames (2013), about 5.5 million people in mainland China are named Shen — 0.41% of the population, ranking 49th.
In the Ministry of Public Security's 2020 national name report (household registration), Shen ranks 52nd.
Where in China is the Shen surname most common?
According to the same 2013 study, the province with the most people named Shen is Jiangsu.
Is Shen in the Hundred Family Surnames?
Yes — 沈 is number 14 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 Shen?
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): Shen
- Wade–Giles (Taiwan, older usage): Shen
- Cantonese (Hong Kong, overseas): Shum, Sum, Sham, Sam; Jyutping sam2
- Vietnamese: Thẩm
How do I build a Shen 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 Shen 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 Shen 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 Shen 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.