董 (Dǒng): surname Dong

Meanings

1 surname Dong
2 to supervise
3 to direct
4 director

Characters

董

dǒng

to supervise, to direct; surname Dong

Examples

HSK 4

他担任公司董事会的董事长。

Tā dānrèn gōngsī dǒngshìhuì de dǒngshìzhǎng.

He serves as the chairman of the company's board of directors.

HSK 7-9

董是中国常见的姓氏之一。

Dǒng shì Zhōngguó chángjiàn de xìngshì zhīyī.

Dong is one of China's common surnames.

Tips

culture

董 as a surname has two famous historical bearers: 董仲舒 (179-104 BC), the Han Confucian scholar who elevated Confucianism to state orthodoxy; and 董卓 (died 192 AD), the notorious warlord of the late Han.

Components

radical

艹 cǎo

grass; plant (top radical)

Top grass radical in its three-stroke compressed form. The indexing radical for 董, though its semantic contribution is faint in modern usage. 董 originally named a kind of rushy plant before the meaning shifted to 'oversee, direct' and the character settled into duty as a common surname.

phonetic

重 zhòng

heavy; important

Bottom 重 supplies the sound zhòng to dǒng through a regular shift. The 'heavy / weighty' meaning of 重 lends a faint flavour to the supervisory sense of 董 (董事 director, 古董 antique): something weighty enough to be entrusted with oversight, or weighed by age.

In Pop Culture

董仲舒 Dǒng Zhòng shū

Dong Zhongshu

Han dynasty Confucian scholar (179-104 BC) who proposed making Confucianism the state ideology under Emperor Wu of Han, shaping Chinese culture for 2,000 years.