王(wáng) - king, monarch; Wang (a surname) in Mandarin

王 (wáng) is a king. On its own it is slightly literary, so a real reigning monarch is usually 国王 and the crown prince is 王子, but bare 王 is everywhere in fixed phrases: 百兽之王 (king of the beasts), 王国 (kingdom), 女王 (queen regnant, as in 英国女王).

It is also one of the commonest surnames in China, which is why the character appears constantly with nothing royal about it. 王先生, 小王, 老王: these are Mr Wang and his colleagues, not royalty. Context does all the work, and the 老 or 小 prefix is a warm, ordinary way of addressing a workmate by surname.

Two look-alikes to keep apart. 玉 (yù, jade) is 王 with a dot, and as a radical it is written exactly like 王 on the left of characters such as 玩, 现 and 球, so a left-hand 王 usually means jade rather than kings. And 往 (wǎng, towards) shares the sound but not the tone or the sense.