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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

Shen.

A surname.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

name/ˈʃɛn/
  1. A surname.

  2. A river in Hubei, China.

  3. A former prefecture of imperial China now within Hengshui, Hebei.

    historical
Where this word comes from

* As a Chinese surname of multiple origins: ** Mandarin form of 沈 ** Mandarin form of 申 (shēn) ** Mandarin form of 慎 (shèn) ** Mandarin form of 莘 (see Xin) ** Variant Romanization of 孫 /孙, see Sun. ** Variant Romanization of 陳 /陈 (chén), also another Mandarin form of 諶 /谌, see Chen. * As a European surname of multiple origins: ** Variant form of Dutch Schoen, from schoen (“shoe”) ** Variant form of German Schoen, from schön (“beautiful, nice”) * As a river and former Chinese prefecture, from the Wade–Giles and Hanyu Pinyin romanizations of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 深 (Shēn).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.