Chinese surname
surnames used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Greater China, Korea, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Chinese names begin with surnames, unlike the Western tradition in which surnames are given last. Around 2,000 Han Chinese surnames are currently in use, but the great proportion of Han Chinese people use only a relatively small number of these surnames; 19 surnames are used by around half of the Han Chinese people, while 100 surnames are used by around 87% of the population. A report in 2019 gives the most common Chinese surnames as Wang and Li, each shared by over 100 million people in China. The remaining eight of the top ten most common Chinese surnames are Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Wu and Zhou.
Two distinct types of Chinese surnames existed in ancient China, namely xing (Chinese: 姓; pinyin: xìng; Wade–Giles: hsing), which were matrilineal, and shi (Chinese: 氏; pinyin: shì; Wade–Giles: shih), which were patrilineal. Later, the two terms were used interchangeably, and in the present day, xing refers to the surname and shi may refer either the clan or maiden name. The two terms may also be used together as xingshi for family names or surnames. Most Chinese surnames (xing) in current use were originally shi. The earliest xing surname might be matrilinear, but Han Chinese family name has been almost exclusively patrilineal for a couple of millennia, passing from father to children.
The public source identifies “Chinese surname” as surnames used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chinese, surname and surnames.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1093580. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chinese surname” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.