吴 (Wú): Wu (Chinese surname)

Meanings

1 Wu (Chinese surname)
2 Wu (ancient state in the Yangtze Delta region)

Characters

吴

Wú

Wu (surname); ancient state name

Examples

HSK 2

吴老师教我们数学。

Wú lǎoshī jiāo wǒmen shùxué.

Teacher Wu teaches us math.

HSK 4

吴是中国最常见的姓之一。

Wú shì Zhōngguó zuì chángjiàn de xìng zhīyī.

Wu is one of the most common surnames in China.

Tips

culture

吴 is the 9th most common Chinese surname (~28 million people). It's associated with the Wu region (modern Jiangsu/Zhejiang) and the Wu dialect group including Shanghainese. The ancient Wu Kingdom was one of the Three Kingdoms (三国).

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Top mouth radical - pictograph of an open mouth, the small square shape. The indexing radical, marking 吴 in the speech/sound family: the original graph showed a person with head tilted, mouth open in song or shout. From that 'loud-voiced figure' came both the surname Wu and the name of the southern state of Wu (Three Kingdoms).

semantic

天 tiān

sky; heaven

Bottom 天 - pictograph of a person 大 with a horizontal stroke marking the head, pointing skyward. In 吴 this bottom is the modern regularised form; historically it was a stretched figure (tilted head). The combined picture: a person with head thrown back, shouting up at the sky - the loud / boastful flavour behind the name 吴.