According to an article published by CNN, 1.2 billion people in China share the same 100 surnames. If you have Chinese friends, it’s very likely their surnames are Wang, Li, Zhang, Chen or Liu. Official figures show that 30% of the Chinese population share these five surnames alone!
As a Spaniard I constantly come into contact with popular surnames such as García, Sánchez and Rodríguez everywhere. However, given the size and population of China, this came as a surprise! That’s why I’d like to share what I’ve learned about this phenomenon…
Throughout Chinese history there have been more than 20,000 surnames recorded, however current official stats show that the 5 surnames mentioned above are shared by more than 30% of the population (approximately 433 million people). To put that in perspective, the US reported 6.3 million surnames in its 2010 census, most of which were only reported once.
Behind some historical reasons like fewer racial diversity compared to other countries and character simplification, the arrival of technology also contributed to this phenomenon.
China’s digital revolution has drastically transformed daily life, and the list of standardized Chinese characters accepted by most sytems would be limited.
As a result, families with rare characters in their names, which aren’t compatible with existing computer systems, choose to change their names for the sake of convenience, “even if it means abandoning centuries of heritage and language”.
In 2017 there were about 32,000 Chinese characters coded in the Chinese character database, which leaves out tens of thousands of characters. Some citizens have had to choose a homonymous character for their surname in order to obtain a second (or more modern) generation digital ID card, which does not support hand-written characters.
Fortunately, experts confirm that the character database has been updated to 70,000 characters and another update to include a total amount of 90,000 characters is ongoing.
Could you imagine having to change your name for technology?
Edited by Jevon Hercules