If you randomly ask someone on the streets of China about their surname, it is highly likely that the answer will be Zhang, Li, Wang, Liu, or Chen. These are the five most common surnames in China today, accounting for over 433 million people.
These five surnames make up more than 433 million Chinese people, equivalent to 30% of the country’s population.
With approximately 1.37 billion people, China is the most populous country in the world but belongs to a group of countries with fewer surnames. According to census data, China has only about 6,000 different surnames.
Throughout historical upheavals, many surnames in China have disappeared. (Photo: CNN).
More than 1.2 billion Chinese, nearly 90% of the population, belong to just 100 surnames. In comparison, the United States – a country with a population only one-fourth that of China – has up to 6.3 million surnames.
There are several reasons explaining this interesting phenomenon.
China, despite its large population, is less diverse ethnically compared to countries with a high number of immigrants, such as the United States.
The language and writing system also play a significant role in the number of surnames in a country. You cannot arbitrarily add a random stroke to a Chinese character to create a new surname. However, you can add a few letters to an English word.
Many rare surnames in China are gradually disappearing over time due to an unexpected factor – technology.
The digital revolution in China has significantly changed the lives of its people. Chinese characters and writing have also become more standardized and stored in computer databases.
This means that individuals with rare surnames, especially those with unique characters in their names, face compatibility issues with computer data. Many Chinese people have to change their surnames to make them “easier to live with.”
“Throughout history, China has recorded more than 20,000 different surnames at one time. Today, there are only over 6,000 surnames in use in China,” said Chen Jiawei, a professor at Beijing Normal University.
The U.S. has over 6.3 million surnames due to its large immigrant population. (Photo: CNN).
“In China, during the feudal era, the phrase ‘the myriad of people and hundred surnames’ was often mentioned. This phrase originated from a Song Dynasty book titled ‘Hundred Surnames,’ which listed the most common surnames in China at that time,” Professor Chen noted.
According to Professor Chen, despite its long history, China has been marked by political instability, migration, and wars. A person’s surname often changes with the upheaval of history. Many surnames are gradually fading away and disappearing.
“Many people also change their surnames to integrate better into society. They arbitrarily drop unique strokes in their surnames to resemble others. Some change their surnames in hopes of bringing more luck or out of fear of bad luck,” Professor Chen said.
According to Xinhua News Agency, as China enters the digital age, almost everything, from scheduling to buying train tickets, is moving online, making it difficult for individuals with rare surnames.
Having a rare surname can complicate opening online bank accounts, registering for phone subscriptions, and using online payment systems, as reported by the Chinese newspaper.
Another challenging issue is that not all Chinese characters are encoded. Xinhua noted that in 2017, approximately 32,000 Han characters were encoded, but there are still tens of thousands of characters remaining unencoded.
Additionally, according to the news agency, by 2017, up to 60 million Chinese citizens faced difficulties writing their surnames.
Another factor contributing to the decline in the number of surnames in China is the effort to standardize the language in Beijing.
Many provinces in China use different dialects of Mandarin. This division is so profound that many regions cannot understand each other’s language.
The consequence is that the standardized Chinese alphabet was created in 2013, praised by state leaders as a “starting point” for standardizing Chinese.
This alphabet includes 8,000 characters, representing only a small portion of the existing characters in Chinese script. Nevertheless, it is applied in education, training, publishing, and various forms of written communication.
