Has been in the top ten list of surnames in China since the Yuan Dynasty It means careful and honest. If not, perhaps you could see where they appear in the list of top Chinese surnames. Have you read our recent blog on the Shanghai Marriage Market , where parents go to find lovers for their children? Characters Select one of the characters from this word to see the stroke order. Member Feature. Please create an account with The Chairman's Bao in order to use this feature.
Join us! Not Now Become Premium. According to the most recent report released in February , these are the top 20 most common Chinese surnames :. With Do you have any Chinese friends or colleagues sporting one of these top 20 common last names from the government figures? Also interested in Chinese given names? Before that, there are two things you need to know. Common Chinese family names have only one syllable or character. People from Hongkong, Macau, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia usually base the romanization on how the names sound in their dialects with other schemes e.
Jyutping, Wade-Giles. The government report reveals that It was the imperial surname in the Tang dynasty. It has its origin from the ancient kingdom Chen, which is located in Henan province today.
They are the family names of Yang is the standard Mandarin Pinyin spelling. This surname has the meaning of yellow and originated from the ancient Huang Kingdom founded in the 7th century B. It originated from the ancient kingdom Zhao.
It has its origin from the Zhou clan at the time. The surname refers to the ancient Kingdom of Zhu, which existed in what is now Shandong province. The surname refers to the ancient Kingdom of Xiguo.
One of the most striking things you realize after spending time in China is how certain last names are very, very common. When I taught high-school English in Jiangsu Province in , I remember there being at least eight—out of a class of about 30—students surnamed Wang, and two of those shared a first name. Fortunately, all of my students adopted English nicknames, making it easier for me to remember who was who. For a country of 1. No one listened. China's history, full of migration, political turmoil and warfare, meant people's names were often in flux -- which is partly why many have since vanished.
Sometimes, ancient rulers and clans would adopt the names of their state or fiefdom; others were granted new royal surnames by emperors. Over the dynasties, ethnic minorities and nomadic groups also adopted Han Chinese names, sometimes given no choice during periods of conflict or intense Sinicization campaigns.
People sometimes changed their names for convenience, too -- for instance, simplifying complex characters by adopting similar-sounding ones with fewer strokes. Other times they did it out of superstition, abandoning a name believed to bring ill fortune, said Chen, the associate professor.
Name extinction is also a naturally occurring phenomenon called the Galton-Watson process, which posits that in patrilineal societies, surnames are lost or die out over time with each new generation as women take on their husbands' surnames. For instance, if a surname was concentrated in a particular area and there weren't enough male descendants, the name could "disappear naturally," said Chen.
Meanwhile, large families with more resources were able to have more children, thus expanding and spreading the family surname. Researchers consider China a common example of this process -- partly because the country's long history means it has lost more names over time, compared to younger countries or countries where surnames didn't become common practice until more recently. Obstacles in the digital age. Rare or uncommon surnames have been dying out for centuries -- but they face an accelerated crisis in modern China.
For many years, people with rare characters in their names could get by, since documents and letters were largely handwritten. But it became near-impossible to use these names in the written form with the rise of digital technology -- and a new digitized national ID system.
The main problem is that not all Chinese characters have been coded into computer systems. In , there were about 32, characters coded in the Chinese character database, according to state-run news agency Xinhua -- leaving out tens of thousands of characters. A Chinese man uses an "electronic ID card" in a mobile payment app to check into a hotel in Hangzhou in April With China roaring into the digital age, nearly everything -- from making appointments to buying train tickets -- has moved online.
That meant a world of trouble if you happened to have a rare character in your name, that might not be in the database.
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