Most Popular Baby Boy Names in China: The Latest Official List (2021) and Their Meanings

The name given most often to baby boys born in China in 2021 was 沐宸, written Muchen in pinyin. According to the 2021 National Name Report published by the Household Registration Administration Research Center of China's Ministry of Public Security, about 23,000 babies received it. The report counts 8.873 million newborns entered in the household register that year, 4.681 million of them boys. In other words, roughly one baby boy in 200 was named Muchen.

The words "latest official list" in the title are deliberate. The ministry published its national name report every year from 2018 to 2021; as far as we could find, no national report has been published for 2022, 2023, 2024 or 2025. That is why our main table is for 2021. For more recent years there are only provincial and city releases, which we look at in a separate, clearly labelled section at the end.

What is a Chinese given name made of?

In a full Chinese name the surname comes first and the given name second; the list covers given names only. All ten names on the 2021 list have two characters, and each character has its own meaning. So the meaning of a Chinese name is not a single dictionary entry: parents combine two characters for their sense and for their sound. The table gives the dictionary meaning of each character separately; the meaning a family reads into the whole name can vary.

The 10 most popular boy names of 2021

The report publishes only the top 10, and a number of babies only for the name in first place. Since no counts were released for the other ranks, we have not added any estimates.

An important note on the Arabic column: Chinese names have no established spelling in Arabic. The forms shown are phonetic transcriptions made from the pronunciation, following the conventions Arabic media use for Chinese names, and the Abjad values are calculated from these transcriptions. A different transcription, for example writing only ش instead of تش for the "ch" sound, would change the number.

One sound, two names: 沐宸 and 沐辰

The most striking detail of the list sits in first and third place. 沐宸 and 沐辰 are both pronounced Muchen and share the first character; they differ only in the second. 宸 means "imperial palace, throne", while 辰 means "star, celestial body, time". Because the report counts names by the characters they are written in, the two are ranked separately. In Latin letters and in Arabic transcription the difference disappears completely: both are Muchen, both are مو تشن, and both have the value 796 (مو 46 + تشن 750).

The 2020 list showed the same effect even more clearly: the sound Yichen entered the top 10 three times, as 奕辰 (1st), 亦辰 (4th) and 亦宸 (10th). These examples also show why Abjad alone is not enough: two names with the same number can carry different meanings because their characters differ.

A name puzzle: six pieces, ten names

Break the 2021 top 10 down into characters and you see that the names are built from a small pool of pieces. The table shows the characters that appear in more than one name (辰 and 宸 are counted together because they sound the same). Of the 20 characters in the ten names, 16 come from these six pieces.

The report's list of the 50 characters used most often in newborns' names also begins with 泽, 梓, 子, 宇 and 沐. One name on the list carries meaning as a whole rather than as a sum of parts: 浩然 (Haoran) is known from the Confucian thinker Mencius and his phrase "haoran zhi qi", usually translated as "vast, upright spirit".

What changed from 2020 to 2021?

Six names on the 2021 list were not in the previous year's top 10: 沐宸, 沐辰, 茗泽, 宇泽, 奕泽 and 沐阳. The 2020 leader 奕辰 fell to fifth, and 宇轩 slipped from second to ninth. 浩宇 rose from third to second and 浩然 from eighth to seventh. The character 宇, found in four names in 2020, appears in three in 2021, while 沐, absent from the 2020 list, appears in three names at once. The 2020 boys' list is taken from a secondary republication of the official text.

Latest local signals: Sichuan 2024 and Chengdu 2025 (not national data)

There is no national list after 2021, but some provincial and city public security bureaus release their own figures. These reflect only that area and cannot stand in for a ranking of China as a whole.

According to the Sichuan Provincial Public Security Department, among the roughly 633,300 babies born in 2024 and registered by the end of the year, the top boy name was 浩宇 (Haoyu), given to 1,178 babies. The last column shows the name's rank on the national lists (– = not in that year's top 10).

Six of the names in Sichuan's top 10 were also on the 2020 or 2021 national list. Five contain the character 辰: 星辰, 奕辰, 沐辰, 宇辰 and 亦辰. In the 2025 figures released by the Chengdu Public Security Bureau, the top boy name was 沐宸, the 2021 national number one. The city's full list was published only as an image, so we report the first place only.

The ten names through the lens of Abjad

Because the values come from phonetic transcriptions, Abjad tells us something different for Chinese names than for names of Arabic origin: the number reflects how the name sounds when written in Arabic letters.

• Highest values: 茗泽 (مينغ زه, 1112) and 沐阳 (مو يانغ, 1107). In both, the "-ng" sound is written نغ, and the letter غ alone is worth 1000.
• Lowest value, shared by two names: 浩宇 (هاو يو) and 宇泽 (يو زه) meet at 28. The shared character 宇, transcribed يو, is worth 16; the remaining parts هاو and زه use different letters but both add up to 12.
• Elements of the first letters: using the classical classification applied in our reports (some authors classify differently), six of the ten names begin with a Fire letter (م or ه) and four with an Air letter (ي); none begins with a Water or Earth letter.

Still, a name's value on its own is not the analysis. In the Abjad tradition the real question is how the name forms a whole with the mother's and father's names, and a child's yıldızname (star chart) is calculated together with the mother's name. In families where one parent is Chinese there is an extra step: first agreeing which Arabic spelling of the name will be used.

Quick questions

Can Abjad tell 沐宸 and 沐辰 apart? No. Both are written مو تشن and add up to 796. The difference lies in the meaning of the character.

Is a name higher on the list "luckier"? No. The ranking only shows how many families chose the name; its Abjad value is independent of popularity.

Why is there nothing for 2022 and later? As far as we could find, no national report has been published since 2021. Local data exist, but they do not represent the whole country.

Source: Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China, Household Registration Administration Research Center, 2021 National Name Report (24 January 2022) and 2020 report (8 February 2021; 2020 boys' list from a secondary republication); Sichuan Provincial Public Security Department (2024 data); Chengdu Public Security Bureau (2025 data). The national report publishes only the top 10; numbers of babies are given only for the names in first place. Character meanings are based on dictionary definitions.

Note: The Arabic spellings of Chinese names are phonetic transcriptions and may vary by source; Abjad values are calculated from these transcriptions. Abjad values and element interpretations are for information, based on the Abjad tradition, and imply no certainty or guarantee.