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Why 1.2 billion people share the same 100 surnames in China
elisfkc2 / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
If you stop a random person on the street in China, there’s a pretty good chance their surname would be either Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu or Chen.
That’s because those are the five most common surnames in China shared by more than 433 million people, or 30% of the population, according to government figures.
With 1.37 billion citizens, China has the world’s largest population, but has one of the smallest surname pools. Only about 6,000 surnames are in use, according to the Ministry of Public Security. And the vast majority of the population almost 86% share just 100 of those surnames.
Updated 7:02 PM ET, Sat January 16, 2021 (CNN)If you stop a random person on the street in China, there s a pretty good chance their surname would be either Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu or Chen.
That s because those are the five most common surnames in China shared by more than 433 million people, or 30% of the population, according to government figures.
With 1.37 billion citizens, China has the world s largest population, but has one of the smallest surname pools. Only about 6,000 surnames are in use, according to the Ministry of Public Security. And the vast majority of the population almost 86% share just 100 of those surnames.