Watch The Animation Learn About Chinese Names

When Chinese people are asked for their names, the first name they give is actually what Westerners would call their “last name”. Often this is the only name that someone will offer a stranger.

The response is likely to be something like, "我姓 王".

“Wo3 xing4 Wang2.” (“I am-family-named Wang.”)  

But, after some pressing, a person might add, "我叫 文明".

“Wo3 jiao4 Wen2-Ming2” – “I am-first-named Wen2-Ming2.”

The last name is always said before the first name. It’s the equivalent of a Westerner saying her name is Smith Matilda. And this is a common naming system in Asian cultures. The same system is also used in Japan, for example, where a person would say, “Watashi-no namae-wa Tanaka Koichi desu". (“My name Tanaka Koichi is.”) -  "My name is Koichi Tanaka".

The “surname”, “clan name”, “family name”, “last name” of a Chinese person - the name they say first when they introduce themselves - is almost always one character in length. Of the thousands of Chinese surnames, only about two dozen are two characters long, and these names are very uncommon. So, almost all of the last names you’ll encounter in China will consist of one character. In the name Mao2毛 (meaning "fur", "hair", or "unrefined") Ze2-Dong1澤 東 (Simplified:泽 东) (meaning "radiant east"), for example, Mao2 is the last name and Ze2-dong1 is the “first name”. In the West, this person would introduce himself as Ze-Dong Mao.

Certain surnames are very common in the West. The ten most common names in the United States, for example, are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown, Davis, Miller, Wilson, Moore, and Taylor. Together, these ten names constitute more than 5% of all the last names in America.

Similarly, certain Chinese names are more common than others in China, but their concentration is significantly greater. In fact, the top four family names in China – Li3李, Wang2王 , Zhang1張 , and Liu2 –劉 are shared by more than 25% of the Chinese population - making them the most common family names in the world. There are roughly 100 million people with just the name Li (pronounced "Lee" with a low dipping tone).

Why should you bother learning Chinese Family names if you’re learning Chinese? Because 80% of the people in China have one of only 20 last names. If you learn to recognize the most common last names you’ll not only have an easier time remembering the people you meet, you’ll also be able to figure out names when you read them. Since Chinese names don’t use capital letters and Chinese names almost all have actual word meanings beyond just the name, it's hard to tell that names are names in a sentence unless you learn the names ahead of time.