Meng (surname)

Meng (/məŋ/, Chinese: 孟; pinyin: Mèng; Wade–Giles: Meng) is a Chinese surname. Meng is a shi surname or clan name (氏), as opposed to the xing (姓) category of surname. Meng is of the type of surname which was a member of the list of names denoting seniority within a certain family: in ancient usage, the characters of meng (孟), zhong (仲), shu (叔) and ji (季) were used to denote the first, second, third and fourth eldest sons in a family. These were sometimes adopted as surnames. Of these, Meng is the best known, being the surname of the philosopher Mencius.