Di (surname)

Di is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname 狄 (Dí).

It was listed 108th among the Song-era Hundred Family Surnames.

Romanization

狄 is often anglicized as "Dee".

Distribution

Di no longer appears among the 100 most common names in mainland China or on Taiwan. It is also quite uncommon in the United States: there were fewer than 100 Dis during the 1990 census and while the number in the year 2000 surpassed that it was still ranked 54,296th among the 150,000 or so listed surnames.^[1]

Origin

狄 is composed of the radicals for "animal" (犭) and "fire" (火) and was used to describe barbarian tribes north of the original zhongguo.

Its Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as *lˤek and its Middle Chinese one as Dek.^[2]

People with the surname

• Di Renjie, the Tang-dynasty official better known as "Judge Dee"

See also

• Chinese name
• List of common Chinese surnames
• The Hundred Family Surnames

References

1. United States Census Bureau. "Genealogy Data: Frequently Occurring Surnames from Census 2000". 27 Sept 2011. Accessed 29 Mar 2012.
2. Baxter, Wm. H. & Sagart, Laurent. "Baxter–Sagart Old Chinese Reconstruction". (1.93 MB), p. 19. 2011. Accessed 11 October 2011.