Xiong

Meaning of Xiong

Xiong is a Chinese masculine name and surname, romanized in Pinyin from the character 熊, which denotes “bear” and historically identifies the royal lineage of the ancient Chu state, thereby conveying connotations of strength and resilience. In Mandarin phonology the name is articulated as shyung (/ʃjʊŋ/), featuring a postalveolar fricative onset, a palatal approximant medial, and a velar nasal coda that conform to common Anglo-American phonotactic patterns, facilitating its phonetic integration within non-Mandarin speaking contexts. Demographic data in the United States indicate that from 1980 through 1997 annual occurrences of the name remained modest—ranging from seven to seventeen entries—and its ranking among male newborns exhibited minor fluctuations between approximately the 600th and 800th positions, reflecting a stable yet niche usage principally associated with Chinese-American communities and their cultural retention. Such analytical observations underscore the name’s technical phonological compatibility with English, its heritage-laden semantic import, and its measured adoption within the broader American naming corpus.