Yang

Yang is the 199th most common surname in the United States, shared by 139,210 people at the 2020 census. That is about one person in 2,147.

By the numbers

People: 139,210
Rank: 199th
How common: 1 in 2,147
Per 100,000: 46.6

Where the name comes from

Origin Chinese

From various atonal romanizations of various characters, including 楊 (“Willow”) and 洋.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Yang described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 96.0%
White, not Hispanic 1.9%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 1.3%
Hispanic or Latino 0.5%
Black, not Hispanic 0.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.03%

Notable people called Yang

Chen-ning Yang (1922–2025)Chinese physicist
Liu Yang (born 1978)Chinese astronaut
Yang Liwei (born 1965)Chinese astronaut
Shang Yang (389 BC–337 BC)Qin State statesman, chancellor and reformer (c. 390–338 BC)
Yang Shangkun (1907–1998)4th President of the People's Republic of China
Jerry Yang (born 1968)founder of Yahoo!
Sun Yang (born 1991)Chinese swimmer
Andrew Yang (born 1975)American entrepreneur, attorney and political candidate

People named Yang with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Yang

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.