Ho (何)
A Taiwanese surname.
何 Ho
- Zhuyin
- ㄏㄜˊ
- Pinyin
- hé
- Wade-Giles
- Ho
- Further spellings of 何
- He
- Taiwanese Hokkien (Tâi-lô)
- Hô Hô is the literary (文讀) reading, while uâ is the character's colloquial (白讀) reading.
- Hakka (Sixian)
- ho¹¹
- Rank in Taiwan
- 27th most common surname, roughly 0.85% of the population (2023 Ministry of the Interior figures)
What the character means
A question word: 'what, why, how, where'.
Where the surname comes from
Tradition traces it to the royal house of the Warring States kingdom of Han (韓): after Qin conquered Han, descendants scattered through the Yangtze-Huai region, where 韓 sounded like 何, and the name came to be written 何. Hall name (堂號): 廬平堂.
Saying it 我姓何 — wǒ xìng hé (ㄨㄛˇ ㄒㄧㄥˋ ㄏㄜˊ), "my family name is 何"
Sources: rank and share, 內政部 全國姓名統計分析 (Ministry of the Interior, National Name Statistics), data as of 2023-06-30. Taiwanese Hokkien readings, 教育部臺灣台語常用詞辭典 (MOE Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwanese Taigi), 百家姓 appendix. Hakka, 教育部臺灣客語辭典 (MOE Dictionary of Taiwan Hakka), 百家姓表, Sixian (四縣腔).