Thirteen Orphans
One of every terminal, wind and dragon, plus a duplicate. A limit hand everywhere it is played.
New here? How to Play Mahjong teaches a first game, and Mahjong Rules covers what every hand needs before a name can help it.
A named hand is a pattern that scores in its own right, over and above being a finished hand.
The hands below are named patterns that the rules single out and pay for. Most pay the limit in at least one style. One pays far less than it looks, which is the surprise.
Nine Gates
One suit, three ones, three nines, everything between, and a spare. It waits on all nine tiles at once.
Big Four Winds
All four winds in sets. At or near the top of every scoring list.
Little Four Winds
Three wind sets and a pair of the fourth. Some lists pay it as much as Big Four Winds, and others less.
Big Three Dragons
A pung of every dragon. 88 points in Chinese Official and a yakuman in riichi.
All Honors
Winds and dragons only, with not a numbered tile in it.
All Green
Only the 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 Bams and the Green Dragon. The Hong Kong lists we checked leave it out.
Four Concealed Pungs
Four pungs, none of them claimed. Win it on the wrong discard and it no longer counts.
All Terminals
Ones and nines only. Add winds or dragons and it pays a fraction as much.
All Terminals and Honors
Ones, nines, winds and dragons. Wikipedia's Hong Kong list calls it Mixed Orphans, and it is worth far less than it looks.
Seven Pairs
Seven pairs and no sets at all, and some Hong Kong tables do not recognize it.
Three lists, three sets of names
The same shape often carries three names, because English took one from Chinese and another from Japanese.
All Terminals and Honors is Mixed Orphans in Wikipedia's list of Hong Kong hands and honroutou in Japanese lists. Nine Gates is also Heavenly Gates.
The word to watch is "orphans". Wikipedia's Hong Kong list uses it for a hand of ones and nines, and puts "mixed" in front when honors join them. Everywhere else it means the thirteen-tile hand. Three different hands, one word, which is worth knowing before you agree to play for money. Mahjong Terms keeps the three apart.
What these hands are worth
Each page gives the value in all three styles, because they disagree on purpose.
Hong Kong scoring is a local agreement and its sources use two different scales, so we call a top hand a limit hand rather than pretending to a number. Chinese Official has a fixed table of 81 patterns with points, and Japanese riichi counts han, with the biggest hands set aside as yakuman. Japanese Mahjong explains han, fu and the limit hands if the riichi columns here need unpacking.
Where the sources disagree, each page says so rather than choosing. That happens more than you would expect on hands this famous.
Questions about named hands
What is a named hand in mahjong?
A pattern that scores on its own, separately from the ordinary business of four sets and a pair. Chinese, Hong Kong and Japanese play all keep lists of them, and some are worth the maximum a hand can pay.
Are these the same as the hands on the American card?
No. American mahjong uses a card of hands published each year by the National Mah Jongg League, and those hands change annually. The hands here belong to Chinese, Hong Kong and Japanese play, which have no yearly card.
Why do the same hands have different names?
Because the names reached English separately, from Chinese and from Japanese. One hand can be All Terminals and Honors, Mixed Orphans and honroutou depending on which book you read.
Where these come from
Every hand on these pages is checked against at least two independent published sources: Tom Sloper's Hong Kong FAQ and his list of Japanese yaku; Wikipedia on Hong Kong scoring and on Japanese yaku; Mahjong Time's Hong Kong, Chinese Official and riichi pages; Yellow Mountain Imports; and, for Chinese Official hands Yellow Mountain leaves out, Chinese-language Wikipedia's list of patterns and the 2006 Chinese Official rulebook.
We wrote all of it in our own words, and where a claim rests on a single source, we name that source beside it. If your table scores one of these differently, that is normal, and we would like to hear about it through the contact page.