Chinese surname shortage sparks rethink

With more than a billion people now sharing just 100 surnames, Chinese authorities are considering a landmark move to try to end the confusion, state media reports.

Current Chinese law states that children are only allowed take the surname from either their mother or father, but the lack of variety means there are now 93 million people in China with the family name Wang.

In a country of around 1.3 billion people, about 85 per cent share only 100 surnames, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Ministry of Public Security in April and published in the China Daily newspaper on Tuesday.

The survey found 92 million people shared the surname Li, while 88 million were called Zhang.

A further seven surnames, including Chen, Zhou and Lin, are held by at least 20 million Chinese.

Under a new draft regulation released by the ministry of public security, parents will be able to combine their surnames for their children, a move that could open up 1.28 million new possibilities, the China Daily reported.

For instance, a father named Zhou and mother named Zhu could choose to call their child either Zhou, Zhu, Zhouzhu or Zhuzhou, the report added.

Guan Xihua, a household registration officer with the Beijing public security bureau, said the lack of variety caused trouble in daily life and the new regulation would slash repetition.

Du Roufu, from the academy, said combined surnames had already become popular with younger couples even though such combinations were not strictly permitted by law.

Mr Du said the move for ethnic minorities would encourage them to use traditional surnames and avoid the practice of taking Han Chinese surnames, which reduces the variety of names and harms their cultural heritage.

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are you sure its 100 because i read tha same thing in a magazine saying that there was 200 different surnames.

I wouldnt know its what the article said. But still 200 only give syoua limited range of names

yeh especially seeing how big there population is.

I wish my last name was Wang.

Dang....thats gotta be confusing, 100/200 names for over a billion pop

I saw this coming!

I did!

I wouldn't be opposed to a few of them using my middle name, just to help out.

Imagine a kid named "God of Thunder Zhouzhu"

catchy!

ha nice but couldnt they like spell each name differently like lu wang and lue waang?

Pandywang has a nice ring to it!

Wow, that is really interesting! I wish I knew the surname demographics for other countries. I wonder if India is having the same problem because don't they have a billion plus population?