Hu is a Chinese surname. In 2006, it was the 15th most common surname in China. In 2013, it was the 13th most common in China, with 13.7 million Chinese sharing this surname. In 2019, Hu dropped to 15th most common surname in Mainland China.
Hu (surname)
Hu Jintao (胡锦涛)
Hu Dahai (胡大海)
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Greater China, Korea, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Written Chinese names begin with surnames, unlike the Western tradition in which surnames are written last. Around 2,000 Han Chinese surnames are currently in use, but the great proportion of Han Chinese people use only a relatively small number of these surnames; 19 surnames are used by around half of the Han Chinese people, while 100 surnames are used by around 87% of the population. A report in 2019 gives the most common Chinese surnames as Wang and Li, each shared by over 100 million people in China. The remaining eight of the top ten most common Chinese surnames are Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Wu and Zhou.
Many village names in China are linked to surnames. Pictured is Jiajiayuan (贾家源), i.e. "Jia Family's Spring", in Honggang Town, Tongshan County, Hubei