‘Dīng kǒu’ is a historical Chinese administrative term referring to registered households and taxable individuals—specifically adult males (‘dīng’) and all counted persons (‘kǒu’). The character 丁 originally meant ‘adult male capable of labor or military service,’ while 口 means ‘person’ or ‘mouth,’ used here as a unit for counting people. Together, they formed a census category in imperial China, especially during the Ming and Qing dynasties, to assess tax obligations and corvée labor.

This term appears almost exclusively in historical texts, archival documents, or academic discussions about pre-modern Chinese governance. It is not used in contemporary daily speech or official statistics; modern equivalents include 户口 (hùkǒu, ‘household registration’) or 人口 (rénkǒu, ‘population’). Because ‘dīng’ carried gendered and age-specific connotations, ‘dīng kǒu’ reflects the hierarchical, state-centered logic of traditional demographic accounting rather than neutral population measurement.