嬴 (yíng): surname Ying

Meanings

1 surname Ying
2 (archaic) variant of 赢, to win
3 (archaic) variant of 盈, full

Characters

嬴

yíng

surname Ying / (archaic) to win

Examples

秦始皇姓嬴，名政。

Qínshǐhuáng xìng Yíng, míng Zhèng.

Qin Shi Huang's surname was Ying and his given name was Zheng.

嬴姓是上古八大姓之一。

Yíng xìng shì shànggǔ bā dà xìng zhīyī.

Ying is one of the eight great surnames of high antiquity.

Tips

history

嬴 is best known as the royal surname of the Qin dynasty — 嬴政 (Ying Zheng) is the personal name of Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor (259-210 BC).

memory

Don't confuse with the visually similar 赢 yíng (to win) and 羸 léi (lean / weak). 嬴 keeps 女 inside the frame; 赢 has 贝 (money / shell).

Components

radical

女 nǚ

woman

女 is the indexing radical, reflecting that 嬴 was the ancestral surname of the Qin royal house, traced through matrilineal Shang-era clan lines. Bottom-center placement also mirrors the structural pattern shared with 赢 (where 贝 takes a similar central role).

semantic

亡 wáng

perish; lose

Top 亡 contributes the upper sound element of the original phonetic stack — its reading once carried over into yíng via Old Chinese vowel shifts. In modern terms it serves mainly as a distinctive top marker that distinguishes 嬴 from the visually similar 赢 and 羸.

semantic

口 kǒu

mouth

Middle 口 sits under 亡 in the upper stack, repeating the same head pattern shared by 赢 (win) and 羸 (weak). It functions structurally rather than semantically — a fixed graphic element that ties this character to the yíng/léi family.

semantic

月 yuè

moon; flesh

Bottom-left 月 contributes one limb of the three-piece base. Together with 女 and 凡 it makes the characteristic 嬴-family foot — a graphic hook that distinguishes this surname character from 赢 (which has 贝 in the same slot).

semantic

凡 fán

ordinary; all

Bottom-right 凡 closes the three-piece foot. It carries no independent meaning here — it's a fixed graphic slot in the 嬴-family signature, paired with 月 and 女 to give this character its distinctive sprawling base.