By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: Why are there so few Chinese surnames?
Does anyone know why there are so few surnames in China?
When did surnames start to be used in China? I thought maybe it was because surnames were more about where you were from than connected to your family line, but that is a totally guess.
Any theories?
the chinese use the 100 ancient surnames, forgot the word for it, bai jia xing, i think, for 85 percent of the population, wang being the most popular at 7 percent, 92 million people with the family name, last name or surname wang.
i teach this name origin for the topic of "names" for the ielts part 1 topic list.
mArtiAn:
Do you teach them that many people in the west use it as a pseudonym for their penis?
And now you know why they are good at copying things , they have had generations of practice. LoL
I've met Lin's. It's funny because I can say ''Run!! Lin (Forest), Run!!" Mama always said life was like a bowl of noodles. You never know what you're gonna get.
Also keep in mind that there is around 6500 Chinese characters being used and a surname is traditionally only 1 character, so that already sets a limit.
Of those it seems reasonable that 100 is being used for surnames as 'ambivalentmace' suggests.
