Only 4,000 of 24,000 historical Chinese surnames remain

Yuan Yida, head of the Chinese surname origins research center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Genetics, has recently completed his two-year work «Statistics of Chinese Surnames», reports «People’s Daily».

This is China’s first surname list ranked by present-day frequency. The study covered almost 300 million people across China.

Around 4,100 surnames were recorded, whereas historical documents contain more than 24,000, meaning almost 20,000 surnames have fallen out of use in China.

Most of these 4,100 surnames consist of one character, apart from a few two- and three-syllable names. Most surname characters are simple to write.