This list of the 100 most common
Chinese surnames derives from China's
Ministry of Public Security's annual report on the top 100 surnames in China, with the latest report release in January 2020 for the year 2019. When the
1982 Chinese census was first published, it did not include a list of top surnames. However, in 2004, the
State Post Bureau subsequently used the census data to release a series of commemorative stamps in honor of the then-most-common surnames in 2004. The summary of the 2007 survey revealed China had approximately 92,881,000
Wangs (7.25% of the population), 92,074,000
Lis (7.19%), and 87,502,000
Zhangs (6.83%). A 2018 survey showed that
Liu and
Chen were the next most common China with more than 70 million each. These top five surnames – Wang, Lee (Li), Zhang, Liu, Chen – alone accounted for more people than
Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world, The next five –
Yang,
Huang,
Zhao,
Wu, and
Zhou – were each shared by more than 20 million Chinese. Twelve more
Xu,
Sun,
Ma,
Zhu,
Hu,
Guo,
He,
Gao,
Lin,
Luo,
Zheng, and
Liangwere each shared by more than 10 million.
Surname list Notes Other surveys :* 2006 multi-year survey and study conducted by
Yuan Yida, a researcher at the
Chinese Academy of Sciences's Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, using a sample size of 296 million spread across 1,110 counties and cities and recording around 4,100 surnames. :* 1990: Ji Yuwen Publishing House, based on a sample size of 174,900. :* 1987 study conducted by Yuan Yida with a sample size of 570,000. :* 1977 study published by
Li Dongming, a Chinese historian, as "Surname" (《姓》) in
Dongfang Magazine.
400 character list In 2013, the Fuxi Institution compiled a ranking of the 400 most common surnames in China. == Taiwan ==