Chinese Surname - Surnames at Present

Surnames At Present

Of the thousands of surnames which have been identified from historical texts prior to the Han Dynasty, most have either been lost (see extinction of family names) or simplified. Historically there are close to 12,000 surnames recorded, of which only about 3,100 are in current use, a factor of almost 4:1 (about 75%) reduction. Surname extinction is due various factors, such as people taking the names of their rulers, orthographic simplifications, taboos against using characters from an emperor's name, and others. While new names have arisen for various reasons, this has been outweighed by old names disappearing. The most significant factor affecting the surname frequency is other ethnic groups identifying as Han and adopting Han names. In recent centuries some two-character surnames have often dropped a character. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, moreover, some surnames have been graphically simplified.

Although there are thousands of Chinese family names, the 100 most common, which together make up less than 5% of those in existence, are shared by 85% of the population. The three most common surnames in Mainland China are Li, Wang and Zhang, which make up 7.9%, 7.4% and 7.1% respectively. Together they number close to 300 million and are easily the most common surnames in the world. In Chinese, the phrase "three Zhang, four Li" (Chinese: 张三李四; pinyin: zhāng sān lǐ sì) is used to say "just anybody".

In a 1990 study, the top 200 family names accounted for over 96% of a random sample of 174,900 persons, with over 500 other names accounting for the remaining 4%. In a different study (1987), which combined data from Taiwan and China (sample size of 570,000 persons), the top 19 names covered 55.6%, and the top 100 names covered 87% of the sample. Other data suggest that the top 50 names comprise 70% of the population.

Most commonly occurring Chinese family names have only one character; however, about twenty double-character family names have survived into modern times. These include Sima (司馬, simp. 司马), Zhuge (諸葛, simp. 诸葛), Ouyang (歐陽, simp. 欧阳), occasionally romanized as O'Young, suggesting an Irish origin to English-speakers, and Situ (or Sito 司徒). Sima, Zhuge, and Ouyong also happen to be the surnames of four extremely famous premodern Chinese historical figures. There are family names with three or more characters, but those are not ethnically Han Chinese. For example, Aixinjueluo (愛新覺羅, also romanized from the Manchu language as Aisin Gioro), was the family name of the Manchu royal family of the Qing dynasty.

Transliteration of Chinese family names (see List of common Chinese surnames) into foreign languages poses a number of problems. Chinese surnames are shared by people speaking a number of dialects and languages which often have different pronunciations of their surnames. The spread of the Chinese diaspora into all parts of the world resulted in the Romanization of the surnames based on different languages. As a result, it is common for the same surname to be transliterated differently. In certain dialects, different surnames could be homonyms so it is common for family names to appear ambiguous when transliterated. Example: 鄭/郑 (pinyin:Zheng) can be romanized into Chang, Cheng, Chung, Teh, Tay, Tee, Tsang, Zeng or Zheng, (in pinyin, Chang, Cheng, Zheng and Zeng are all different names). Translating Chinese surnames from foreign transliteration often presents ambiguity. For example, the surname "Li" are all mandarin-based pinyin transliteration for the surnames 黎 (Lí); 李, 理 and 里 (Lǐ); 郦/酈, 栗, 厉/厲, and 利 (Lì) depending on the tone which are often omitted in foreign transliterations.