Surnames
--The Origin

Gao Shi Lian, a government official, made a survey and found that there were a total of 593 different surnames. He then wrote and published a book called "Annals of Surnames" which became a reference for selecting qualified personnel as government officials and for arranging marriages.

The book, "Surnames of a Hundred Families", which was popular in China during the old days, was written more than 1,000 years ago during the Northern Song Dynasty (960 AD). It records 438 surnames of which 408 are single-word surnames and 30 were double-word surnames.

According to the latest statistics from China, Chinese with the surname Zhang alone number more than 100 million, making it probably the surname which the most number of the Chinese have. Another set of statistics compiled in 1977 reveals that the number of the Chinese with the first 10 major surnames make up 40% of the Chinese population, they are: Zhang, Wang, Li, Zhao, Chen, Yang, Wu, Lin, Huang and Zhou.

The next 10 major surnames. The Chinese with these surnames make up over 10% of the Chinese population: Xu, Zhu, Lin, Sun, Ma, Gao, Hu, Zheng, Guo and Xiao.