# Tsai Surname: Meaning, Origin, and How to Say It > Tsai, Cai, Choi and Chua are one Chinese surname, 蔡. How to say it, why it reads Taiwanese, and the Cai who gave the world paper. Canonical: https://jadealmanac.com/chinese-surnames/cai Author: Julian (祝君瑜), Jade Almanac · https://jadealmanac.com/about Method and sourcing: https://jadealmanac.com/sources Tsai and Cai are the same Chinese surname, 蔡, written the same way in simplified and traditional. It is the thirty-eighth most common surname in mainland China, but ninth in Taiwan and eighth in Singapore, which is why so many of the Tsais an English reader has heard of turn out to be Taiwanese. The character has had four separate careers in the written record. It named a plant, a giant tortoise used for telling the future, a state in what is now Henan, and, as a verb, the act of throwing somebody out of the country. All four are documented, and the last two are connected. ## Spellings heading Four spellings, and one that belongs to somebody else This name fans out further than most, because it left China from the Fujian coast in large numbers and every port it landed in wrote it down differently. All of the first seven rows are the same family. The last row is not, and it is the biggest trap on this page: in English, Choi is far more often a Korean name that has nothing to do with this one. Which gives a working rule. A Choi who is Korean is almost certainly 崔 and no relation. A Choi who is Cantonese may well be this name. As always, one character settles what no amount of spelling research can. ## How to say it Start here, because this is the name people look up in order to say out loud without embarrassing themselves, and both of its main spellings mislead an English reader in a different direction. Tsai is one syllable. The vowel is easy: it is the word eye. The consonant is the problem, and it is a real one rather than a matter of fussiness. That opening ts is the sound at the end of the English word cats, and English is perfectly comfortable with it there. What English never does is put that sound at the *front* of a word. Mandarin does it constantly. The workaround that actually functions: say cats, hold on to the ts at the end, and then attach eye to it. Cats-eye, minus the ca. Do it a few times and it stops feeling impossible. Not sigh. Not zai. Not chai, though that is the closest of the three near-misses. Then there is the pitch. Mandarin gives it a sharp falling tone, dropping from high to low, the pitch of an English speaker saying "No." firmly. Nothing rises. The pinyin spelling, Cai, is the same sound written by a different system, and it fools people even more thoroughly. In pinyin the letter c is always that ts. Always. It is never a k and never an s, so Cai is not kai and not say. This is one of pinyin's more brutal choices, made because the alphabet had run out of letters and c was free, and it has been ambushing English speakers ever since. Cantonese takes an easier route. Choi and Choy rhyme with boy. Hokkien gives Chua, which is roughly chwa. ## Taiwanese or Chinese This gets asked constantly and the honest answer has two halves that pull in opposite directions. The name is Chinese and very old, taken from a state that existed in what is now Henan three thousand years ago, which is about as far from Taiwan as Chinese history gets. On the mainland it is the thirty-eighth most common surname. But in Taiwan it is ninth. And in Singapore it is eighth. That is a large gap, and it is not noise. This surname sits heavily along the southeastern coast, in Fujian above all, and Fujian is the province that faces Taiwan across a hundred miles of water and supplied most of its Han settlement. The same coastline supplied Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, which is why there are so many Chuas in Southeast Asia. The spelling then adds a second, entirely separate signal. Taiwan never converted personal names to pinyin; the mainland did, in the 1950s. So Tsai with a T is, in practice, a Taiwan spelling, or the spelling of a family that left China before the change. Cai with a C usually means the mainland or a recent emigrant. Put the two together and the popular intuition turns out to be right for two different reasons at once. A Tsai probably does have a Taiwanese connection. The family is Chinese and older than the question. ## A plant, a turtle, and a verb for throwing someone out Now the character, which has led an unusually varied life. The *Shuowen Jiezi*, around 100 CE, is brisk about it: a plant. It files the character under the grass radical, notes that the element underneath is supplying the sound rather than the sense, and moves on. That is the origin, and it is a slightly deflating one for a name this distinguished. The second life is stranger and much better. This character also named a large tortoise, specifically the kind whose shell was heated until it cracked so that the cracks could be read as an answer from the ancestors. Divination tortoises appear to have come from the state of Cai, and the state's name went onto the animal. Which produces a small scene in the *Analects*. Confucius, in the chapter called Gong Ye Chang, is unimpressed by a statesman named Zang Wenzhong, who kept one of these tortoises in a shrine with hills carved on the pillar capitals and duckweed painted on the beams. In James Legge's translation: "Zang Wen kept a large tortoise in a house, on the capitals of the pillars of which he had hills made... Of what sort was his wisdom?" It is Confucius being sarcastic about somebody's interior decorating, and the tortoise in it is this surname. The third life is the odd one. The same character works as a verb meaning to banish, to cast out. And this is where the surname's own history folds back on itself, which is the next section. The fourth, for completeness, is the state, and the *Kangxi Dictionary* adds a fifth sense, a standard or a law. A plant, a turtle, a banishment, a country and a rule. Not many characters carry that spread. ## Named for a man who was thrown out The founding ancestor of this surname was a traitor. This is not the usual thing for a genealogy page to lead with, but it is what the record says and it is far more interesting than the alternative. King Wen of Zhou had a large number of sons. The second became King Wu, who overthrew the Shang. The fifth, Ji Du, was given the fief of Cai around 1046 BCE, as one of a group of royal brothers posted to keep an eye on the defeated Shang remnant. Then King Wu died, leaving a child heir, and their younger brother the Duke of Zhou took the regency. Several of the posted brothers did not accept this and revolted, with the Shang prince they had been sent to watch. The rising was put down. Guan Shu, the ringleader, was executed. Cai Shu was banished. Which brings us back to the verb. The *Zuo Zhuan*, recording the episode centuries later, has a sentence in which this character appears twice in immediate succession: the first is the verb, to banish, and the second is the man's name. The Duke of Zhou killed Guan Shu and *cai*-ed Cai Shu. The founder's disgrace is written into the grammar of the sentence that records it, and to a classically educated Chinese reader the pun is unmissable. The family recovered. Cai Shu's son conducted himself well enough that the fief was restored to him, and the state of Cai ran on for another six hundred years until the southern power of Chu finally finished it off in 447 BCE. Its people did what people always did when a state fell, and took its name as their own. ## The paper of Lord Cai And then, eight centuries after the state disappeared, this surname produced a man with a stronger claim to have changed the world than almost anyone else in Chinese history. Cai Lun was a eunuch at the Eastern Han court, in charge of the palace workshops, which meant he ran the empire's research and development. In 105 CE he presented the throne with a process for making a cheap writing surface out of tree bark, hemp waste, old rags and fishing nets, boiled to pulp and dried in sheets. He did not invent paper outright; fragments predate him by two centuries. What he did was make it good enough and cheap enough to replace silk and bamboo strips, which is the part that matters. The *Book of the Later Han* records that it came into use everywhere and was universally called the paper of Lord Cai. Michael Hart, ranking the hundred most influential people in history, put him seventh, ahead of Gutenberg and ahead of Einstein, on the reasonable grounds that Gutenberg needed something to print on. His ending is one of the bleakest in the dynastic histories, and it has nothing to do with paper. Cai Lun had been involved, years earlier, in palace intrigue that led to the death of an imperial consort. He was protected while his patron the Empress Dowager lived. When she died in 121 CE, the emperor summoned him to answer for it. He went home, took a bath, put on his formal robes, and drank poison. The surname has kept producing people. Cai Wenji, a poet of the same dynasty, was carried off by the Xiongnu and eventually ransomed home by Cao Cao, and the poems attributed to her about that journey are still read. Tsai Ing-wen became the first woman to serve as president of Taiwan. Jolin Tsai has spent two decades as one of the biggest pop stars in the Chinese-speaking world. If you want to see how a Chinese name is put together, sound and meaning at the same time, [our name builder](/chinese-name) will make one from yours. A weed, a turtle, a banished prince, and the paper this is all printed on. ## Spellings - Tsai · Mandarin (Wade-Giles) · Taiwan, and older overseas families everywhere · The spelling that stayed. Taiwan never switched personal names over to pinyin, so a Tsai is usually Taiwanese or from a family that emigrated before the 1950s. Tsai Ing-wen and Jolin Tsai both write it this way. - Cai · Mandarin (pinyin) · Mainland China, recent emigrants · The mainland standard, and a spelling that misleads nearly every English reader who meets it. The c is not a k and not an s. In pinyin, c is the ts of cats. - Choi / Choy / Tsoi · Cantonese · Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong, and the older Cantonese diaspora · The Cantonese readings, and the ones that collide with Korean. It rhymes with boy. - Chua / Chuah · Hokkien and Teochew · Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines · The Southern Min readings, and the reason this surname is eighth in Singapore. A great many Chuas are this character. - Chai · Hakka and various · Malaysia, Borneo · A less common spelling, arrived at by a different dialect and a different clerk. - Thái · Vietnamese · Vietnam · The same character read in Vietnamese, written Thai in English once the diacritic goes. - Chae (채) · Korean · Korea · The Korean reading of this character, and a genuine if uncommon Korean surname. This is the Korean form of this name. - Choi, for 崔 · Korean · Korea and the Korean diaspora · Not this name, and the one that catches everybody. Korean Choi is 崔, which Mandarin calls Cui. It is the fourth most common surname in South Korea, carried by around 2.3 million people, so most Chois in English are Korean and unrelated to this family. ## FAQ **What nationality is the last name Tsai?** Chinese. Written 蔡, it is the thirty-eighth most common surname in mainland China, ninth in Taiwan and eighth in Singapore. The spelling Tsai in particular points to Taiwan or to an older overseas family, because Taiwan kept the Wade-Giles romanization for personal names while the mainland moved to pinyin, where the same name is spelled Cai. The same character is read Choi or Choy in Cantonese, Chua in Hokkien, Thái in Vietnamese and Chae in Korean. **Is Tsai a Taiwanese or Chinese last name?** Both, and the two halves of the answer point in different directions. The name is Chinese and ancient, taken from a Zhou-dynasty state in what is now Henan. But it is genuinely concentrated in the south and southeast: thirty-eighth on the mainland against ninth in Taiwan, which is a large gap, and the Fujian coast opposite Taiwan is where much of that concentration sits. The spelling adds a second layer, because Tsai with a T is a Taiwan spelling convention. So a Tsai is very likely to have a Taiwanese connection, while the family itself is Chinese and older than either place's modern history. **How do you pronounce the surname Tsai?** Roughly ts-eye, in one syllable, on a sharp falling pitch. The tricky part is the beginning: it is the ts of cats, but at the front of a word, which English never does. Say the word cats, hold on to the final ts, then attach eye to it. Not sigh, not zai, not chai. The pinyin spelling Cai is the same sound written differently, because in pinyin the letter c is always that ts, which is why Cai is not kai and not say. **Is Choi a Chinese or Korean name?** Usually Korean, and usually not this family. Korean Choi is written 崔, which Mandarin reads as Cui, and it is the fourth most common surname in South Korea with roughly 2.3 million bearers, about 4.7 percent of the country. Cantonese also romanizes 蔡 as Choi or Choy, so a Hong Kong Choi may well be this name. The Korean form of this surname is not Choi at all but Chae. If someone named Choi is Korean, the odds strongly favor the other character. **Who was the most famous person with the surname Cai?** Cai Lun, on any global measure. A eunuch official at the Eastern Han court, he presented an improved papermaking process to Emperor He in 105 CE, using tree bark, hemp waste, old rags and fishing nets, and the Book of the Later Han records that the result came to be called the paper of Lord Cai. Michael Hart's ranking of the hundred most influential people in history places him seventh, ahead of Gutenberg and Einstein. In Taiwan the best-known bearer is Tsai Ing-wen, the first woman to serve as the island's president. ## Sources - The Shuowen Jiezi entry for 蔡, glossed as a plant and analyzed as the grass radical over a phonetic element, together with the Kangxi senses of a large tortoise, a standard, and the verb to banish (Chinese Text Project dictionary): https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=gb&char=%E8%94%A1 - Analects, Gong Ye Chang, on Zang Wenzhong housing a great divining tortoise, with James Legge's translation (Chinese Text Project): https://ctext.org/analects/gong-ye-chang/zh - Zuo Zhuan, first year of Duke Zhao, where the character appears twice in a row, first as the verb to banish and then as the name of the man banished (Chinese Text Project): https://ctext.org/chun-qiu-zuo-zhuan/zhao-gong-yuan-nian/zh - Cai (surname): rank thirty-eight in mainland China in 2019, ninth in Taiwan in 2018, eighth in Singapore, descent from Ji Du, and the readings Tsai, Choi, Choy, Tsoi, Chua, Chuah, Thái and Chae: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cai_(surname) - Cai Shudu: the fifth son of King Wen, his part in the revolt against the Duke of Zhou's regency, and his exile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cai_Shudu - Cai (state): the Zhou fief in what is now Henan, its restoration under Cai Shudu's son, and its destruction by Chu in 447 BCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cai_(state) - Cai Lun: the papermaking presentation of 105 CE, the materials, the Book of the Later Han's phrase paper of Lord Cai, Michael Hart's seventh place ranking, and his death by poison in 121 CE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cai_Lun - Choi (Korean surname): the character 崔, fourth most common in South Korea with about 2.3 million bearers, and the article's own note separating it from the Cantonese romanization of 蔡: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choi_(Korean_surname) - Chae (Korean surname): the Korean reading of 蔡: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chae_(Korean_surname) - Cai Yan, known as Cai Wenji: the Han-dynasty poet, her captivity among the Xiongnu, and her ransom by Cao Cao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cai_Yan - Tsai Ing-wen: the first woman to serve as President of Taiwan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsai_Ing-wen - Jolin Tsai: the Taiwanese singer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolin_Tsai