Just as those who come to study Mandarin in China know, there were many family names in for Chinese people since the ancient times. Those we often hear might be Zhao, Qian, Sun and Li. However, which one is the surname used by the most Chinese people becomes a question need to be proved. According to the information of the identification cards, the surname Wang is the one used by the largest number of Chinese citizens.
In 2007, the national citizen identification number inquiries service center of the minister of public security administration made an analysis to the statistics of the whole national registered population, showing that surname Wang was the first surname in Chinese family. With a population of 92.881 million, it takes a total percentage of 7.25% in the whole people. The surname Li in Chinese family ranked in the second place accounted for 7.19% and with 92.074 million people. The third one is Zhang about 87.502 million people with a proportion of 6.83%.
However, there is a different answer for which one is the most popular. According to the sampling survey data, the foreigners who study abroad in China can see that the surname Li was used by the most people. It shows that the surnames Li, Wang, Zhang, Liu and Chen are the main four surnames in the Book of Family Names, with a total added number of 350 million people. The number of Li, Wang and Zhang take the proportion of respectively 7.9%, 7.4% and 7.1% of Han people.
Lasted for two years, the investigation and study were managed by Yuan Yida, researcher of genetic and biology institute of China Academy of Science. The research covers 1110 counties and cities in China, obtaining the information of 296 million people and 4100 surnames. According to the universal surname law of evolution, the number of the people who use the popular surnames will be more while the seldom used surname s will be less and even die out.
In accordance with the proportion of the population in the levels of county, region and province, the new order of surnames in the Book of Family Names in today‘s China formed. In order to help the foreigners who learn Chinese one-on-one to gain their background knowledge, the followings are some usually seen surnames provided: Li, Wang, Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Zhao, Huang, Zhou, Wu, Xu, Sun, Hu, Zhu, Gao, Lin, He, Guo, Ma, Luo, Liang, Song, Zhen, etc.