Qian, also variously spelt Ch'ien, Chien, Chin, Tsien, and (from its Wu pronunciation) Zee, is a common Chinese surname. It is particularly common in Eastern China, where members of the family ruled from Hangzhou as kings of Wuyue in the 10th-century interregnum between the Tang and Song dynasties. In 2008, Qian was the 96th most common surname in mainland China, shared by 2.2 million people, with the greatest concentration of Qians being in Jiangsu Province.
The traditional character for the name is a phono-semantic compound formed by a (copper, metal, gold) radical on the left and a character now pronounced and meaning "to harm", "tiny", or "accumulating" in different contexts but used at the time for its closer pronunciation in Old Chineseon the right. itself was an ideograph taking its meaning from Chinese dagger-axes (, ) used originally in opposition and later in conjunction. The simplified form of the character uses a more stylized on the left and a new glyph on the right that adds an extra line to to indicate its previous duplication.
The name literally means "money" but previously particularly referred to the cash, a low-denomination coin made from copper, bronze, and other base metals that was used in imperial and early Republican China. Less commonly, the word is used metonymically for expense, property, value, etc.; for small round discs similar to the coins; and for the mace, the small traditional unit of mass equivalent to the notional weight of the coins after Tang-era monetary reforms. Still less commonly, it is used for small metal farm tools, particularly spades (cf. spade money, once common in China under the Zhou).
According to legends related in the Song-era Tongzhi encyclopedia, the Qian surname supposedly originated from a Zhou official named Fu who worked in the royal treasury, then known as the (, "Money Office"). His descendants adopted the surname from his office and title. The legend further claimed that Fu had been a descendant of Pengzu, a long-lived and extremely virile "marquis" of Dapeng in present-day Jiangsu under the Shang, who was himself a descendant of Zhuanxu, one of the Five Emperors of remote antiquity sometimes conflated with the North Star and its gods, who was himself reckoned a grandson of the Yellow Emperor, the culture hero credited with beginning Chinese civilization. Dynasts and residents of Peng, the Qian family were thought to have originally congregated around its capital Xiapi, present-day Pizhou in Jiangsu. The surname spread from there but remains most common in Jiangnan, the region of eastern China around the Yangtze River Delta and Hangzhou Bay.
From 907960, Qian Liu and his descendants ruled the largely independent Kingdom of Wuyue during the interregnum between the Tang and Song dynasties. Qian Liu had many, many sons by many wives and concubines and posted them to prominent positions across different parts of his realm, greatly expanding the prominence of the surname across a territory comprising present-day Zhejiang, Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, and northern Fujian. Following the submission of Qian Chu to the Song in 978, he and some members of his immediate family were removed to the Song capital Bianjing, now Kaifeng in Henan. Considered loyal and capable, the family remained prominent at the Song court for generations. This period spread the family through central and northern China as well. The Chinese classic list of the Hundred Family Surnames was composed under the Song. As the royal dynasty of the successful and loyal realm of Wuyue, Qian placed second in the list only behind Zhao, the surname of the imperial Song dynasty itself. Further, almost all the other families in the list's first lineSun, Zhou, Wu, Zheng, and Wangseem to have been given their placement as the families of Qian Chu's wives in their order of status.