Talk:List of common Chinese surnames/Archive 1

Vietnamese spellings

Vietnamese spellings were added for all surnames by 66.167.192.167. Do all these surnames exist in Vietnam? Or just that they're the spellings of the same words in Vietnamese? :-D — Instantnood 07:38, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Vietnamese is very much related to Chinese, especially considering Vietnamese was once writtern using Chinese script. I dont see why the addition is something to question about?--Huaiwei 07:42, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, Vietnamese is not genetically related to Chinese, since it is technically part of another language family. However, it has incorporated a majority of its vocabulary from Chinese, including its naming system. This situation is similar to Korean, which is also in a separate language family, but has also incorporated most of its vocabulary from Chinese. Back to the point, since the names are originally of Chinese origin, there's no reason why they shouldn't be mentioned in the last column. --Umofomia 07:58, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Are all these surnames of Vietnamese people? Some Han Chinese surnames are not found among Koreans, and I am not sure if it's also the case for Vietnamese. — Instantnood 08:11, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

This site shows the correspondence between certain Chinese characters and their equivalents in Vietnamese. I don't have the time to double-check all the names given (plus not all of the characters are in that site), but the ones I have checked looked okay. You raised a good point though, and I'm not sure if they're all used by Vietnamese. We'll have to find a Vietnamese person to confirm. --Umofomia 08:19, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Seems like there aren't many Vietnamese editing on Wikipedia. :-D — Instantnood 14:49, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

I actually asked Vietnamese members in a forum, and they said its correct. Hardly scientific thou, but I would think they are alright to remain till anyone could validiy this convincingly.--Huaiwei 15:22, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam (Sino-Vietnamese) commonly write their surname using the Vietnamese writing system. In Vietnam, Mr. Chen might be known as Mr. Tran, and the romanization would carry over when Mr. Tran migrates to a country that uses the Latin alphabet. The presence of Vietnamese spellings of Chinese surnames doesn't neccessarily imply they're Vietnamese surnames. While many surnames are shared, some like Nguyen are unique to Vietnamese or very rare to Chinese, and I'm sure the opposite is true as well. --Yuje 22:41, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Nguyen (spelt Yuen in Hong Kong, Yuan according to Pinyin) is found in Guangdong, and probably in Guangxi. Some might have partial and distant Vietnamese or Kinh ancestry tho. — Instantnood 05:23, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

Use this tool to find the Vietnamese pronunciation of Chinese characters. Many of these names are common in Vietnam, others are found only in the Hoa minority group. There are in fact many Vietnamese speakers editing in Wikipedia, you'll just have to know where to look. Just ask your question at vi:Wikipedia:Guestbook_for_non-Vietnamese_speakers and somebody will answer you. This list of Vietnamese-speaking Wikipedians at the English Wikipedia is also growing. DHN 11:19, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Rankings by province/region

Is there any rankings by province or by region? It would be interesting to see the picture how some surnames are concentrated in certain regions. I've tried looking up on the internet but seems there isn't any. — Instantnood 23:58, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Some info (very limited) is given on Chinese surname. --Dpr 08:15, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Redundancy

Does the column for simplified character need to be filled in cases (of which there are several), in which the traditional and simplified form are identical? --Dpr 07:57, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I also think that it is unnecessary; furthermore, it makes difficult to visualize which surnamens REALLY have simplified versions. 201.6.253.247 14:03, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I have just solved the redundancy issue. [1] See if that works. -- Felix Wan 21:09, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Korean surnames

Most, if not all of the statistics I've seen list Kim as the most common Korean surname, but it is not indicated as such here. Instead, Lee/Yi is noted as the most common. Why? 82.123.155.250 18:25, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

This is a list of the top 100 Chinese surnames, and Li/Lee is the most common Chinese surname overall (7.9% of the population). Obviously, you can expect regional variations among populations. For instance, in Taiwan, the most common is Chen (11%), and Lee drops to #4, as you can see here. Kim ranks #1 in Korea (20% there) but is not as common among the Chinese (ranking #56 in the current list). For Korean names you may want to check the List of Korean family names. HYC 04:20, 22 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Han names only or all people in China?

Does the list have only Han surnames? Is it in order of the commonest? LDHan 21:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Alphabetical order

Wouldn´t it be better in ocidental alphabetical order (of course, respecting each section), just like the chinese page? 201.6.253.247 14:07, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

This is a list of the 100 most common names listed by frequency, while the Chinese page zh:中文姓氏列表 is a simply list of all Chinese surnames. The two pages serve different purposes and are not equivalent to one another. -- HYC 10:44, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Time to update the list

The top 100 surnames have changed according to a study just published in 2006:

李王张刘陈杨黄赵周吴

徐孙朱马胡郭林何高梁

郑罗宋谢唐韩曹许邓萧

冯曾程蔡彭潘袁于董余

苏叶吕魏蒋田杜丁沈姜

范江傅钟卢汪戴崔任陆

廖姚方金邱夏谭韦贾邹

石熊孟秦阎薛侯雷白龙

段郝孔邵史毛常万顾赖

武康贺严尹钱施牛洪龚

The reference [2] is a news article, which may disappear after some time. If someone know the primary source or a more stable link, please post it here. While I am working on the list in User:Felix Wan/Draft/List of common Chinese surnames, discussion on the proposed change is also welcome. -- Felix Wan 20:03, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. -- Felix Wan 06:34, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Populations in general are fairly steady, and I wouldn't have expected great changes in just 15 years (such as a name listed #26 in 1990 being completely dropped out of the top 100 in just 16 years, as it has been the case). I believe much of the discrepances are due to the inadequate sampling. For instance, it is said in Chinese surname#Distribution of surnames that, overall, Li is the most common Chinese name, while Wang predominates in Northern China and Chen in Southern China. If that is true, then the referenced 1990 study, with a sample of 174900 persons (which represents only 0.013% of the total population in PRC) could well have been skewed totards Northern China, for instance.

I would like to see more details about this 2006 study included, either in the article or in the discussion, if possible (details like sampling, design of the study, geographical representation, agency responsible, how data was obtained, etc.). If the data comes from the Census Bureau, it probably would be more reliable. -- HYC 08:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The news article says that the study was led by Yuan Yida of the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology [3] of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The sampling size was 296,000,000, covering 1100 counties and cities all over China. (There are 2862 county-level divisions according to Political divisions of China. The population is about 1,300,000,000.) Collected data were adjusted according to population proportion of counties, districts and provinces. -- Felix Wan 08:21, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

This article [4] says that Yuan's study in 1987 concluded the first three to be Li, Wang and Zhang. The sample size was 570,000. That is more consistent with the current result than the quoted 1990 study is. -- Felix Wan 08:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I think positions can be a bit misleading without looking at the numbers of people or % of the population, as names could have similar numbers of people but positioned widely apart. Some of the names in the 1990 list does seem a bit odd, eg 26, Shé, people have told me that it's not a common surname. LDHan 11:56, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Shé "佘" is odd to be old #26. I suspect some count could have come by mistake from Yú "余" (old #61 new #40). I doubt the accuracy of the 1990 study. Yuan Yida's study appears to be more accurate. -- Felix Wan 01:07, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest dropping the 1990 study and using instead the 1987 one for comparison with that of 2006. I also like the suggestion of adding the % of the population (or maybe the ‰). Is such info available on the 2006 study? --HYC 06:56, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you, but I do not have such info. We will need help from other Wikipedians. The 1990 data is kept just to maintain a continuity in the discussion. We may consider dropping it later with or without the 1987 replacement. -- Felix Wan 22:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be a great disparity in some of the 1990 and 2006 rankings... for example 葉 dropped from 11th in 1990 to 42nd in 2006... Did all the 葉s die off in these 16 years? More likely is that one of the censuses (censi?) is inaccurate. Same with 呂. -- Миборовский 23:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Mistake in Romanized surname 陸

--Rapunzel77gil 16:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)The problem with romanizing the surnames is that it creates many variations. In justifying my statement, I noted an error in the 60th popular surname 陸. I share this surname and am a Cantonese. In the Romanized version, my surname is spelled as Loke. No doubt about the spelling. The Cantonese pronunciation for 陸 can either be Luk or Loke. A large majority in Singapore with the romanized surname Loke are Cantonese. The Hokkien Romanized version for 陸 however, is spelled as Lek not Loke.

Font

The text in the table is showing up in Times Roman. Can the font be changed to Arial so that it's not forced into Times? Thank you, Badagnani 08:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)