Tang, is a Chinese surname. The three languages also have the surname with the same character but different pronunciation/romanization. In Korean, it is usually romanized also as Dang. In Japanese, the surname is often romanized as To. In Vietnamese, it is commonly written as Đường. It is pronounced dhɑng in Middle Chinese, and lhāŋ in Old Chinese. It is the 64th name on the Hundred Family Surnames poem. The surname 唐 is also romanized as Tong when transliterated from Cantonese, and this spelling is common in Hong Kong and Macau. In Chinese, 湯, is also romanized as Tang in English, although it is less common as a surname.
People with this surname mainly have two originations:
From the clan name Tao-Tang
* Tao-Tang was the clan name for Emperor Yao's tribe, so Yao is also known as Tang Yao or Tang Fangxun . Tao means pottery, which was a very important invention and tool in ancient China; Tang was the ancient name for the place currently is part of central China and the central plain of Shanxi Province. Yao's tribe combined the names of pottery and their resident place as their clan name. The descendants of Yao continued using the surname Tang instead of Tao-Tang, probably for simplification purpose.
* In the early Zhou Dynasty, when the King Cheng of Zhou was still a child, one day he played a game with his young brother Tang Shuyu. The King Cheng of Zhou cut a tungleaf to a Jade Gui shape, sent to Tang Shuyu, and said: you are raised to the Marquis of Tang. The chancellor aside immediately advised the King Cheng of Zhou to choose an auspicious day and make a royal ceremony for establishing Tang Shuyu. The King Cheng of Zhou was surprised, and said, "We are just playing a game and I just made a joke." The chancellor replied: the King cannot make a joke, once the King speaks out, historians record his words, the loyal ceremony will be held, and the loyal music will be played." Thus Tang Shuyu was raised to the Marquis of Tang, and later became the first king of Jin. It's a famous historic event and the origin for the Chinese phraseTongye Fenghou. His offspring continued using Tang as their surname.
Chinese Muslims
Unlike some other Hui people who claim foreign ancestry, Hui in Gansu with the surname "Tang" 唐, are descended from Han Chinese who converted to Islam and married Muslim Hui or Dongxiang people, switching their ethnicity and joining the Hui and Dongxiang ethnic groups, both of which are Muslim. A town called Tangwangchuan in Gansu had a multi ethnic populace, the Tang 唐 and Wang 汪 families being the two major families. The Tang and Wang families were originally of non Muslim Han Chinese extraction, but by the 1910s some branches of the families became Muslim by "intermarriage or conversion" while other branches of the families remained non Muslim.
