Hundreds or thousands of Chinese family names have been historically used by Han Chinese and Sinicized Chinese ethnic groups in mainland China, Taiwan, and among overseas Chinese communities. In ancient times two types of surnames, family names (Chinese: 姓; pinyin: xìng) and clan names (氏; pinyin: shì), existed.
The colloquial expressions laobaixing (老百姓; lit. "old hundred surnames"), and bǎixìng (百姓, lit. "hundred surnames") are used in Chinese to mean "ordinary folks", "the people", or "commoners." Bǎijiāxìng (百家姓) is also used to call the list of one hundred most common surnames.
Chinese family names are patrilineal, passed from father to children. (In cases of adoption, the adoptee usually also takes the same surname.)
Prior to the Warring States Period (fifth century BC), only the royal family and the aristocratic elite could generally take surnames. Historically there was also difference between xing (姓) and shi (氏). Xing were surnames held by the immediate royal family. They generally are composed of a nü (女, meaning "female") radical which suggests that they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages. Another hypothesis has been proposed by sinologist Léon Vandermeersch upon observation of the evolution of characters in oracular scripture from the Shang dynasty through the Zhou. The "female" radical seems to appear at the Zhou period next to Shang sinograms indicating an ethnic group or a tribe. This combination seems to designate specifically a female and could mean "lady of such or such clan". The structure of the xing sinogram could reflect the fact that in the royal court of Zhou, at least in the beginning, only females (wives married into the Zhou family from other clans) were called by their birth clan name, while the men were usually designated by their title or fief.
Prior to the Qin Dynasty (third century BC) China was largely a feudal society. As fiefdoms were divided and subdivided among descendants, so additional sub-surnames known as shi were created to distinguish between different seniority of lineages among the nobles though in theory they shared the same ancestor. In this way, a nobleman would hold a shi and a xing. After the states of China were unified by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC, surnames gradually devolved to the lower classes and the difference between xing and shi blurred.
Shi surnames, many of which survive to the present day, usually from a/an:
Surnames are not evenly distributed throughout China's geography. In northern China, Wang (王) is the most common surname, being shared by 9.9% of the population. Next are Li (李), Zhang (张/張) and Liu (刘/劉). In the south, Chen (陈/陳) is the most common, being shared by 10.6% of the population. Next are Li (李), Huang (黄), Lin (林) and Zhang (张/張). Around the major crossing points of the Yangtze River, the most common surname is Li (李), taking up 7.7%, followed by Wang (王), Zhang (张/張), Chen (陈/陳) and Liu (刘/劉).
A 1987 study showed over 450 family names in common use in Beijing, but there were fewer than 300 family names in Fujian.
A study by geneticist Yuan Yida has found that of all the people with a particular surname, there tends to be a population concentration in a certain province, as tabled to the right. It does not show, however, the most common surnames in any one province.
The 55th most common family name "Xiao" (肖) appears to be very rare in Hong Kong. This is explained by the fact Hong Kong uses traditional Chinese characters not simplified Chinese characters. Originally, the surname 蕭 (Xiao) was rather common while the surname 肖 (Xiao) was extremely rare, if not non-existent (it is mentioned only sporadically in historical texts). The first round of simplification in 1956 simplified 蕭 into 萧, keeping 蕭/萧 and 肖 distinct. However the second-round in 1977, which has long been abolished, merged 萧 and 肖 into 肖. Despite the retraction of the second round, some people have kept 肖 as their surname, so that there are now two separate surnames, 萧 and 肖.
Chén (trad 陳, simp 陈) is perhaps the most common surname in Hong Kong and Macau (romanized as Chan) and is also common in Taiwan (romanized as Chen). Fang (方), which is only the 47th most common overall, is much more common in San Francisco's Chinatown in the United States (more often romanized as Fong based on the Cantonese dialect). As with the concentration of family names, this can also be explained statistically, as a person with an uncommon name moving to an unsettled area and leaving his family name to large number of people.
After the Song Dynasty, surname distributions in China largely settled down. The Kwong family for example, migrated from the capital in the north and settled in Guangdong after the revolts of the Song Dynasty. Villages were often made up of a single patrilineage, being individuals with the same surname, often with a common male ancestor. They usually intermarried with others from nearby villages, creating genetic clusters.
Of the thousands of surnames which have been identified from historical texts prior to the Han Dynasty, most have either been lost (via the Galton–Watson process of extinction of family names) or simplified. 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 surnames, 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 "some Zhang, some 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 mainland China (sample size of 570,000 persons), the top 19 names covered 55.6% [1], and the top 100 names covered 87% of the sample. Other data suggest that the top 50 names comprise 70% of the population.[2]
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). 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 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 romanised 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 tranliteration 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.
Due to the different pronunciation and romanisations, it is generally easy to tell whether a Chinese person has origins in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Southeast Asia including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In general people from China will have both their surnames and names in pinyin. Those from Taiwan use Wade-Giles romanisation. People from Southeast Asia (mainly Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines) and Hong Kong usually base their romanisation of surnames and names on Min, Hakka and Cantonese dialects. The younger generation from Singapore predominantly have their surname in dialect and given name in English.