Surname Origin
Surname Entry

Liu

Liu most often represents Chinese 劉/刘 (Liú), but the same spelling can also stand for the separate surnames 柳 (Liǔ), 留 (Liú), and, in some records, 廖.

Last updated: 2026-08-13

Liu is usually the Mandarin pinyin spelling of 劉 (simplified 刘), pronounced Liú. It is one of the most frequent surnames in mainland China and has an important historical association with the ruling house of the Han dynasty. It does not, however, identify one lineage or even one Chinese character.

The Latin spelling can also represent 柳 (Liǔ, literally "willow") and 留 (Liú, "remain" or "stay"). The Dictionary of American Family Names additionally records Liu as a Cantonese form of 廖, which is normally written Liào in Mandarin pinyin. A reliable interpretation therefore begins with the character, not with the English spelling alone.

Which Chinese Character Is Liu?

  • 劉 / 刘 (Liú) is the overwhelmingly common surname intended by Liu in Mandarin-based spelling. 劉 is the traditional form; 刘 is its simplified counterpart.
  • 柳 (Liǔ) is a different surname. Its ordinary lexical meaning is "willow," and its third tone distinguishes it from Liú when tone marks are written.
  • 留 (Liú) is another distinct surname with the same Mandarin syllable and tone as 劉. Its ordinary verbal sense is "to stay" or "to remain."
  • 廖 is a separate surname usually romanized Liao from Mandarin. Liu can represent it in some Cantonese-derived records.

These are not graphic variants of one surname. 劉 and 刘 are two script forms of the same character, while 柳, 留, and 廖 have separate written identities and name histories. The distinctions and origin accounts are set out in Patrick Hanks's Dictionary of American Family Names entry for Liu.

What Does 劉 Mean?

The old non-surname senses of 劉 are martial. The Chinese University of Hong Kong's Multi-function Chinese Character Database analyzes the graph as containing metal and knife elements and records an ancient noun for a type of battle-axe. It also documents verbal uses meaning to kill or destroy and, in another context, to conquer.

Those word senses should not be turned into a literal definition of every Liu family. The historical formation accounts for the surname 劉 are principally toponymic or political: people are said to have taken the name of a state or fief, while others received the surname from an emperor. It is therefore more accurate to say that 劉 has old lexical associations with an axe and with killing than to say that the modern surname simply "means killer."

The same caution applies to the other characters. 柳 literally denotes a willow and 留 can mean to remain, but the recorded surname traditions for both include names taken from places. A character's dictionary gloss and the historical reason it became a surname are related questions, not interchangeable answers.

Several Independent Formation Traditions

The surname dictionary edited by Hanks does not give 劉 a single founder. It records a tradition from an ancient state called Liu in what is now Tang County, Hebei, and another from a fief called Liu near present-day Yanshi, Henan. It also records the conferral of 劉 on the Western Han figures Lou Jing and Xiang Bo by Liu Bang. These are different mechanisms: adoption from a place and bestowal by a ruler.

The less common characters have their own accounts. For 柳, the dictionary connects one line with Liuxia, a fief in the state of Lu in present-day Shandong, and with the official Zhan Qin, known as Liuxia Hui (traditionally dated 720–621 BCE). It gives another place-based origin from a fief in what is now Xihua, Henan. For 留, it records traditions from fiefs in present-day Henan and Jiangsu. It also preserves an account of a politically imposed change: descendants of Liu Dan, who died in 459 CE after rebelling against his brother, Emperor Xiaowu of Liu Song, were ordered to change their surname from 劉 to the homophonous 留.

Some Chinese surname accounts extend lineages back to legendary rulers. Such claims belong to traditional origin literature and cannot by themselves establish continuous descent for a living family. Even the better-attested place names, grants, and surname changes show why Liu cannot be reduced to one founding event.

The Han Dynasty Association

The best-known historical bearer of 劉 is Liu Bang (劉邦), Emperor Gaozu, the founding emperor of the Western Han, who died in 195 BCE. His dynasty made Liu an imperial surname, but that political prominence does not prove that all later bearers descend from him.

The distinction matters because the Han court deliberately organized power around the imperial lineage. Historian Yunxin Li notes that Gaozu established nine kings from the Liu lineage and that, after the reign of Emperor Jing began in 157 BCE, Han kings were normally members of that lineage. Li's study also shows that the number of Liu nobles changed as imperial succession and policies changed. This is firm evidence for the surname's place in Han political history, not a universal genealogy for people called Liu today.

Romanization and Spelling Variants

Liu is a pinyin spelling, normally printed without the tone mark in personal names. The Taiwan CNS character database gives 刘 the Hanyu Pinyin reading liú. Earlier Wade–Giles material does not necessarily produce a visibly different surname here: the Library of Congress Wade–Giles-to-pinyin table maps the syllable liu to liu.

Dialect and regional spellings create more variation than that particular change of Mandarin romanization:

  • Lau is recorded as a Cantonese form of both 劉 and 柳.
  • Liew can represent 劉, 柳, or 留 and is especially associated with Malaysian usage; it can also represent 廖.
  • Lew can represent 劉 or 柳, but it also occurs for unrelated Chinese characters and for non-Chinese surnames.

These correspondences, documented in the dictionary's entries for Lau, Liew, and Lew, are search possibilities rather than automatic equivalences. Conversely, two people who both spell their name Liu may write different characters.

Modern Distribution

The surname 刘 ranks fourth in the mainland Chinese household-registration data reported for 2020. The Ministry of Public Security report lists Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, and Chen as the five most frequent surnames; together they accounted for 30.8 percent of the registered population covered by the report, which excluded Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. A 2021 Ministry report further states that Shandong had the largest provincial total of people surnamed Liu. This means the largest count, not that every Liu line originated in Shandong.

Taiwan's Department of Household Registration counted 743,179 people surnamed 劉 on 30 June 2018, placing it eighth nationally at 3.15 percent of the population in its National Name Statistics Analysis.

The spelling is also well established in the United States. Joshua Comenetz's U.S. Census Bureau report Last Name Data From the 2020 Census counted 127,257 occurrences of Liu, up from 78,370 in 2010. Liu was second only to Zhang in percentage growth among surnames that ranked in the top 1,000 in both censuses. Those figures count the Latin-script surname as reported; they do not separate 劉, 柳, 留, 廖, or every possible non-Chinese use of the spelling.

Etymology Is Not Genealogy

For a particular Liu family, the decisive first clue is the inherited character. After that, ancestral place and language variety help distinguish lines and explain why records may alternate among Liu, Lau, Liew, or Lew. A traditional-character document may show 劉 where a mainland record uses simplified 刘; that is a script difference, not a separate surname. A change between 劉 and 留, by contrast, changes the character and may reflect a distinct historical naming event.

Neither a shared spelling nor a shared character proves close relationship. The multiple place-based origins, imperial grants, and recorded surname changes make Liu a particularly clear example of the difference between the history of a surname and the genealogy of one family.

References

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