The Gongye surname (公冶)
Gongye (公冶, Gōngyě) is a less common Chinese surname.
How do you pronounce the surname 公冶?
As a surname, 公冶 is pronounced Gōngyě in Mandarin (written Gongye without tone marks). Gongye is a two-character (compound) surname.
How is Gongye written in Chinese?
It is written 公冶 in both simplified and traditional Chinese.
How common is the Gongye surname?
Gongye is outside the 400 most common surnames (2013) and the top 100 of the 2020 registration statistics.
Is Gongye in the Hundred Family Surnames?
Yes — 公冶 is number 422 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 Gongye?
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): Gongye
- Wade–Giles (Taiwan, older usage): Kung-yeh
- Cantonese (Hong Kong, overseas): Jyutping gung1 je5
- Korean: 공야
- Vietnamese: Công Dã
How do I build a Gongye 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 Gongye 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 Gongye 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 Gongye 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
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.