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The Number of Chinese Characters for Surnames over Twenty Thousand

In the ancient times, the Chinese people are quite pride of their hundreds of surnames. However, recently, with the publication of “Dictionary of Chinese Surnames”, there are more than twenty thousand Chinese characters for surnames. The exact number is 23,813.

The simplest surname is the surname comes from Lisu people—“一” (yi, means one) and the most complicated surname is a surname of the Zang people, the surname goes “huo er chuan zha mu su ta er zhi duo”, which includes ten characters and means strength and bravery and auspiciousness. The most special surnames are always appear in the ethnic groups. And what is interesting is that the words for “firewood” (chai), “rice” (mi), “sauce” (jiang), “vinegar” (cu), “tea” (cha) are all the surnames. However, the most common surnames in China are still the surnames passed down from generation to generation, like “li, wang, zhang, liu, chen, yang”.

 

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