The name clones of China

[ricecake]

The major problem is that Chinese surnames are limited to a single hanzi and a thus single syllable,there are only 700 surnames for 1.3 billion people.

Like the Japanese,Chinese people do not have multiple given names.

Ancient Chinese surnames started out with 2 characters,as Kung-Sung for commonly known legendary ancestor Huang Di ( Yellow Emperor ) plus several examples I have to retrieve from my copy of " Chinese common family names ".There are 20-30 existent compound surnames with less than 1 million in population,Tse-Ma or Tse-To ( origin of court official rankings in ancient times ) and Au-Yang are common ones.

Chinese traditionally had multiple given names as the practice has faded in modern time,it's family to family whether one has 2 or more given names among younger generations.Me and my elder siblings have 2 given names at birth,one for public use and the other stays in written " jukpo " ( family root book ).My rarely used given name has 2 Kanji characters meaning " virtue fairy ",oppose to I am known to everyone as " way of love " for the meaning of my 2 Chinese ( monosyllabic characters ) first name.

[ricecake]

My rarely used given name has 2 Kanji characters meaning " virtue fairy ",oppose to I am known to everyone as " way of love " for the meaning of my 2 Chinese ( monosyllabic characters ) first name.

Minor modification,Chinese given name generally consists of " middle " and " first " names.For instance,my middle name is " way " with first name " love ".

However,I've met a few Chinese ( mainly the northerners ) only have one-character given name with no middle name.

[ricecake]

Ancient Chinese surnames started out with 2 characters,several examples I have to retrieve from my copy of " Chinese common family names ".

Just an update,there are several known still in existent compound surnames of Han-Chinese origin.They are Wang-Pu,Dong-Fang,Si-Mong,Nan-Kong,and Seng-Kong plus some not listed here are dead but stay recorded in the book as reference.

[ricecake]

Ancient Chinese surnames started out with 2 characters.

I need to make minor clarification here,there were also single-character surnames as well.Most Han Chinese family names branched out from those ancient ones created back then.