Li declared China's most common surname

Asian Economic News, August 5, 2002

BEIJING, July 30 Kyodo

When trying to guess a northern Chinese person's name, Wang would be the best bet, but in the south it would be better to have a stab at Chen, according to a Tuesday report in the state media.

Li, however, is China's most popular surname overall, accounting for 7.9% of China's 1.3 billion population, the China Daily reported.

Wang is close behind, accounting for 7.4%, followed by third-placed Zhang with 7.1%, according to research by the Chinese Academy of Sciences based on national census information.

By region, 9.9% of the population of northern China are surnamed Wang while 10.6% of southern Chinese people have the surname Chen.

Although China's surnames are shorter than in most other countries, they have the longest history, since today's popular names have been around for 5,000 years, according to the report.

While China's common people like to refer to themselves as ''lao baixing'' (old 100 surnames), the research, conducted over 10 years, shows there are actually 22,000 surnames in China.

However, a mere 19 surnames account for half of China's population. In addition to the three most popular surnames, these are Liu, Chen, Yang, Zhao, Huang, Zhou, Wu, Xu, Sun, Hu, Zhu, Gao, Lin, He, Guo and Ma.