Huang is the third largest surname in Taiwan Province Province and the seventh largest surname in China, ranking 96th among hundreds of surnames. However, according to the National Citizenship Information System (NCIIS) of the household registration administration, Huang is the eighth surname. Huang has the largest population in Guangdong Province, accounting for about 19% of the total population of Huang, and is the third largest surname in Guangdong and Hong Kong.

Because Huang and Wang have similar pronunciations (Cantonese pronunciations are the same), they usually emphasize "big belly yellow", "grass head yellow" or "Jiangxia yellow" when explaining. However, although it is called "grass head yellow", the word "yellow" itself is radical and does not belong to the grass department.

According to 1977, a paper on "surnames" published by China historians in Oriental Magazine, Huang is one of the top ten surnames of Chinese in the world.