Cen (surname)


Cen is the Mandarin pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname written in Chinese character. It is romanized Ts'en in Wade–Giles, and variously as Shum, Sam, Sham, Sum in Cantonese, and Chen in other pinyin forms. Cen is listed 67th in the Song dynasty classic text Hundred Family Surnames. As of 2008, it is the 235th most common surname in China, shared by 340,000 people. Cen is considered a rare surname. A person with a rare surname like Cen may be able to trace his or her origins to a single ancestral area.

Notable people

In Imperial China, large parts of Guangxi and Guizhou were ruled by the local tusis of Cen clan, such as Tianzhou or the Sicheng native prefecture. The Cens are ethnic Zhuang, but how and when they became Zhuang is unclear. Genealogies from Ming and Qing dynasties state that the founding ancestor is Cen Zhongshu, the Song general from Zhejiang.
Prominent members include: