Duong
A Vietnamese surname most often associated with a name meaning “sun,” “positive,” or “yang.”
The #1,431 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 12,414 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Duong is a Vietnamese surname most commonly written in the quốc ngữ spelling for the Sino-Vietnamese name Dương. It is usually linked to the Chinese character 陽/阳, meaning “sun,” “sunlight,” or “the positive principle” in the yin-yang pair. In some families it may also reflect a different Chinese source name, so the exact historical character can vary.
History
The surname is especially common among Vietnamese communities and is well represented in diaspora populations in the United States, France, Australia, and Canada. In Romanization, Dương is often written without the tone mark as Duong, which is why that spelling is frequent in English-language records. Because Vietnamese surnames were transmitted through Chinese writing systems and later through quốc ngữ, the same spelling can cover more than one original character.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
In Vietnamese, the tone-marked form Dương is unrelated in spelling to the English word “duo,” but English records often drop the accent, making Duong the common bureaucratic form.