Shen (surname)

Shen (沈)
Pronunciation	Shěn (Mandarin) Shum (Cantonese) Thẩm (Vietnamese)
Language(s)	Chinese
Origin
Language(s)	Old Chinese
Meaning	to sink
Other names
Variant(s)	Sim, Shim, Sam, Sheem, Sum

Shěn is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname .

Shen is the 14th surname in the Song-era Hundred Family Surnames.

沈 is romanised as Sum, Sem, Sam, or Shum in Cantonese; Sim in Hokkien; Shim in Hakka; Shim, Sim, and Sheem in Korean; and Thẩm in Vietnamese.

Less commonly, the same character can also be pronounced Zhen, which indicates a different origin from Shen.

Shen was the 50th-most-common surname in mainland China in 2007, but unlisted among the 100 most common surnames on Taiwan in 2005. There are approximately 6 million 沈 located in China. As of the top 30 cities in China，top ranking last names rank 沈 as 6th most common in Hangzhou and 8th most common in Shanghai.

Although Chinese make up the largest part of America's Asian and Pacific Islander population, none of the romanizations of "沈" appeared among the 1000 most common surnames during the AD 2000 US census.

As is common with Chinese surnames, the modern Shen family arose from various unrelated sources.

One origin traces it to the Shen (沈) kingdom in Runan County, Henan. These people were descended from Shao Hao, whose grandson was Zhuanxu's teacher and fathered Yun Ge and Tai Dai. Tai Dai was granted Shanxi for his achievements in controlling the flooding of the Yellow River and his descendants divided into four "kingdoms": the Shen, the Yi, the Ru, and the Huang. Electing not to participate in the northern kingdoms' campaign against Chu in 506 BC, Shen was invaded and destroyed by Cai. The rulers and vassals of the former state then bore the clan name Shen to distinguish themselves.

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