It is romanized Ts'en in Wade–Giles, and variously as Sam, Sum, Sham, Shum in Cantonese, Gim, Khim, Chim in Taiwanese Hokkien and Chen in other pinyin forms.

Cen is listed 67th in the Song dynasty classic text Hundred Family Surnames.

A person with a rare surname like Cen may be able to trace his or her origins to a single ancestral area.

[3] In Imperial China, large parts of Guangxi and Guizhou were ruled by the local tusis of Cen clan, such as Tianzhou or the Sicheng native prefecture (Sicheng tufu).

Genealogies from Ming and Qing dynasties state that the founding ancestor is Cen Zhongshu, the Song general from Zhejiang.