That's a whole lot of Wang!

[Dregor Thule]

With more than a billion people now sharing just 100 surnames, Chinese authorities are considering a landmark move to try to end the confusion, state media reported Tuesday.

Current Chinese law states that children are only allowed take the surname from either their mother or father, but the lack of variety means there are now 93 million people in China with the family name Wang.

In a country of around 1.3 billion people, about 85 percent share only 100 surnames, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Ministry of Public Security in April and published in the China Daily newspaper on Tuesday.

The survey found 92 million people shared the surname Li, while 88 million were called Zhang. A further seven surnames -- including Chen, Zhou and Lin -- are held by at least 20 million Chinese.

Another report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences found at least 100,000 people share China's most popular name, Wang Tao.

Under a new draft regulation released by the ministry of public security, parents will be able to combine their surnames for their children, a move that could open up 1.28 million new possibilities, the China Daily reported.

For instance, a father named Zhou and mother named Zhu could choose to call their child either Zhou, Zhu, Zhouzhu or Zhuzhou, the report added.

Guan Xihua, a household registration officer with the Beijing public security bureau, said the lack of variety caused trouble in daily life and the new regulation would slash repetition.

Du Roufu, from the academy, said combined surnames had already become popular with younger couples even though such combinations were not strictly permitted by law.

The draft also allows ethnic minorities to register some letters and characters among new names, but bans any foreign letters.

Du said the move for ethnic minorities would encourage them to use traditional surnames and avoid the practice of taking Han Chinese surnames, which reduces the variety of names and harms their cultural heritage.

Found this pretty interesting. I had no idea that even the naming of a child was government controlled in China. If someone more familiar with Chinese culture could be so kind to confirm, the way I see it a Chinese name is surname, given name? Like with the Wang Tao example, Wang is his family name, while Tao is the given name? Is he refered to as Tao then?

I'm admittedly quite ignorant in this area.

[Winnow]

Moon Unit Wang

You're going to see a mad rush on Wangs tracking down future potential spouses named Chung.

[VariaVespasa]

Moon Unit Wang

You're going to see a mad rush on Wangs tracking down future potential spouses named Chung.

Never EVER do that again!

[Truant]

Yes Dregor, that is correct. Japanese names work the same way, as do Korean and uhh Vietnamese I think.

[Braxter]

It's an interesting problem that the Chinese government did not foresee when they started regulating reproduction a few decades ago. They made the bearing of more than one child so expensive that the vast majority of people cannot afford it. This led to some generations of "only" children and did away with aunts and uncles and in turn, cousins.

When families could have more than one child, the Chinese often gave "generation" names to children, meaning that each child's full name could be represented by three characters. Since this wasn't universal, some Chinese had two names, some had three, so there were lots of variations of full names. Now very few people are using generation names, so it's becoming hard to distinguish between certain families and others.

Here's a notion that people don't really think about. My family is quite large. My maternal grandmother had 9 children and my paternal grandmother had 8. So I have lots of aunts/uncles and TONS of cousins (literally even). If I were Chinese, over a hundred members of my extended family would never have existed, including my brother. Just weird to think about. It's especially weird when you consider the neuroses that are commonly affiliated with being an only child. Imagine a whole country of them! China's gonna be a spoiled brat pretty soon.

[Lalanae]

It's especially weird when you consider the neuroses that are commonly affiliated with being an only child.

yeah those only children are real whack jobs!

[Xyun]

It's an interesting problem that the Chinese government did not foresee when they started regulating reproduction a few decades ago. They made the bearing of more than one child so expensive that the vast majority of people cannot afford it. This led to some generations of "only" children and did away with aunts and uncles and in turn, cousins.

When families could have more than one child, the Chinese often gave "generation" names to children, meaning that each child's full name could be represented by three characters. Since this wasn't universal, some Chinese had two names, some had three, so there were lots of variations of full names. Now very few people are using generation names, so it's becoming hard to distinguish between certain families and others.

Here's a notion that people don't really think about. My family is quite large. My maternal grandmother had 9 children and my paternal grandmother had 8. So I have lots of aunts/uncles and TONS of cousins (literally even). If I were Chinese, over a hundred members of my extended family would never have existed, including my brother. Just weird to think about. It's especially weird when you consider the neuroses that are commonly affiliated with being an only child. Imagine a whole country of them! China's gonna be a spoiled brat pretty soon.

Actually, I'd exist and you wouldn't.

carry on...

[Dregor Thule]

It's an interesting problem that the Chinese government did not foresee when they started regulating reproduction a few decades ago. They made the bearing of more than one child so expensive that the vast majority of people cannot afford it. This led to some generations of "only" children and did away with aunts and uncles and in turn, cousins.

When families could have more than one child, the Chinese often gave "generation" names to children, meaning that each child's full name could be represented by three characters. Since this wasn't universal, some Chinese had two names, some had three, so there were lots of variations of full names. Now very few people are using generation names, so it's becoming hard to distinguish between certain families and others.

Here's a notion that people don't really think about. My family is quite large. My maternal grandmother had 9 children and my paternal grandmother had 8. So I have lots of aunts/uncles and TONS of cousins (literally even). If I were Chinese, over a hundred members of my extended family would never have existed, including my brother. Just weird to think about. It's especially weird when you consider the neuroses that are commonly affiliated with being an only child. Imagine a whole country of them! China's gonna be a spoiled brat pretty soon.

Actually, I'd exist and you wouldn't.

carry on...

Owned? Yes, I'd say owned!

Personally, I'm in favour of limits on childbirth. The planet is already horribly overpopulated, and it's only getting worse.