#surname

According to this list, these are the top 10 surnames in China as of 2020*:

1. 李 Lǐ
   
2. 王 Wáng
3. 张 Zhāng
4. 刘 Liú
5. 陈 Chén
6. 杨 Yáng
7. 赵 Zhào
8. 黄 Huáng
9. 周 Zhōu
10. 吴 Wú

I’ve seen articles like this one discussing the regional distribution of surnames. I wanted to take a look myself and compare the top surnames in different provinces/municipalities. For instance, do any locations have a top 10 list that is the same as the overall country top 10? Which surname is ranked #1 in the most locations? Let’s explore and have some fun along the way.

*The top surnames for 西藏 Tibet are not included. I believe this is because the population is vast majority Tibetan.

1) Find how many surnames in a location’s top 10 are also in the national top 10.

Most in common

Arrows: grey = same as national rank, green = higher than national rank, red = lower than national rank
Circles: orange = in national top 10 but missing from top 10 of individual location, blue = outside national top 10

• 四川 Sichuan - 9/10 surnames
  Missing: 赵 Zhào
  Added: 罗 Luó
• 贵州 Guizhou - 9/10 surnames
  Missing: 赵 Zhào
  Added: 罗 Luó

Fewest in common

• 浙江 Zhejiang - 6/10 surnames
  Missing: 杨 Yáng, 赵 Zhào, 黄 Huáng & 周 Zhōu
  Added: 林 Lín, 叶 Yè, 郑 Zhèng & 徐 Xú
• 广西 Guangxi - 6/10 surnames
  Missing list: 赵 Zhào, 黄 Huáng, 周 Zhōu & 吴 Wú
  Added: 梁 Liáng, 韦 Wéi, 陆 Lù & 卢 Lú
• 上海 Shanghai - 6/10 surnames
  Missing: 刘 Liú, 杨 Yáng, 赵 Zhào & 黄 Huáng
  Added: 朱 Zhū, 徐 Xú, 沈 Shěn & 陆 Lù

2) Find the average national rank for each location’s top 10 list.

OK, this section is a little confusing. Basically, I was thinking that just counting overlapping surnames this isn’t necessarily the best metric. When it comes to surnames outside the national top 10, just counting like I did above can’t distinguish a rank of 100 from a rank of 11! So I decided to take averages.

For each location, I found the national rank of the its top 10 surnames and averaged them. This should give me an idea of which location’s top 10 surnames collectively rank the highest in the whole country. If you add up 1-10 and divide by 10, you get an average of 5.5, so that would be the minimum possible average. 

Lowest average

Highlighting: red = lower than national rank, green = higher than national rank, no highlighting = same as national rank
Blue circling = outside of national top 10
Annotated numbers = national rank

• 湖北 Hubei - 6.2 average
  Outside national top 10: 胡 Hú & 徐 Xú
• 安徽 Anhui - 6.3 average
  Outside national top 10: 徐 Xú & 孙 Sūn
• 江苏 Jiangsu - 6.5 average
  Outside national top 10: 徐 Xú & 朱 Zhū

Highest average

• 海南 Hainan - 30.5 average
  Outside national top 10: 符 Fú, 林 Lín & 郑 Zhèng
• 广西 Guangxi - 28.2 average
  Outside national top 10: 梁 Liáng, 韦 Wéi, 陆 Lù & 卢 Lú
• 上海 Shanghai - 16.2 average
  Outside national top 10: 朱 Zhū, 徐 Xú, 沈 Shěn & 陆 Lù

3) Add the difference in rank of surnames for each location to create a composite score.

Then I started to think about order within the top 10. After all, a province for which 李 Lǐ ranks #10 should be treated differently from one where 李 Lǐ is #1. So I wanted to capture the difference between a surname’s national rank and its rank for individual locations.

For example, in 广东 Guangdong, 陈 Chén ranks #1, but it’s #5 in the whole country. The difference is 5 - 1 = 4. I did this for the other 9 surnames in 广东 Guangdong’s top 10 as well and added the numbers to get a composite score. Then I repeated this for the other locations.

I used absolute values—otherwise a positive difference and negative difference would offset each other! But I used + and - signs in the images below to show more information. You could also divided by 10 to get the average difference for the top 10 surnames each location.

Lowest score

Highlighting: red = lower than national rank, green = higher than national rank, no highlighting = same as national rank
Blue circling = outside of national top 10
Annotated numbers = difference b/t national rank and local rank, with (+) indicating a higher rank locally and (-) indicating a lower rank locally

• 安徽 Anhui - 14 score
  
• 四川 Sichuan - 15 score
  
• 宁夏 Ningxia - 20 score
  

Highest score

• 海南 Hainan - 264 score
  
• 广西 Guangxi - 253 score
  
• 山西 Shanxi - 113 score
  
• 上海 Shanghai - 113 score
  

4) For each location, determine how many surnames have no difference in rank.

As an extension of the above, for each location, I counted the number of top 10 surnames that had no difference in rank compared to the national rank. Let’s look closer at locations whose top 10 lists had the fewest changes:

• 四川 Sichuan - 6 surnames
  李 Lǐ, 刘 Liú, 陈 Chén, 杨 Yáng, 黄 Huáng & 吴 Wú
• 青海 Qinghai - 4 surnames
  李 Lǐ, 刘 Liú, 杨 Yáng & 吴 Wú
• 云南 Yunnan - 4 surnames
  李 Lǐ, 陈 Chén, 赵 Zhào & 周 Zhōu
• 重庆 Chongqing - 4 surnames
  李 Lǐ, 刘 Liú, 杨 Yáng & 黄 Huáng

I’ll also list the locations for which no surnames had the same rank as in the top 10:

• 广东 Guangdong
• 福建 Fujian
• 江西 Jiangxi
• 江苏 Jiangsu
• 贵州 Guizhou

Summary: Which location’s top 10 is closest to the national top 10?

We just saw several different ways of looking at this. Someone who is better at math than I am would probably devise a way to combine the different metrics into a single score. I’m just going to recap which locations we saw appear the most.

Overall most similar: 四川 Sichuan & 安徽 Anhui

Overall least similar: 广西 Guangxi, 上海 Shanghai & 海南 Hainan

5) Find which surnames appear on the most and least location top 10 lists.

This wasn’t something I was initially curious about, but after my analyses above, I grew curious. I’m just looking at the national top 10 surnames here. There are 30 locations total, so 30 is the highest possible number.

So 李 Lǐ and 张 Zhāng are the only two that appear in the top 10 for all 30 locations!

I also thought it would be interesting to see which locations are missing for the surnames that were close to 30/30:

• 陈 Chén - 29/30
  Missing: 新疆 Xinjiang
• 王 Wáng - 28/30
  Missing: 广东 Guangdong & 广西 Guangxi
  
• 刘 Liú - 28/30
  Missing: 海南 Hainan & 上海 Shanghai
  
• 杨 Yáng - 26/30
  Missing: 海南 Hainan, 浙江 Zhejiang, 江西 Jiangxi & 上海 Shanghai

6) Which surname ranks 1st in the most locations?

This questions grew pretty naturally off of the question above. I spent far too long making this map to go along with the numbers!

The winner is…王 Wáng with 15 locations! It’s so interesting to see how 王 Wáng is dominant in the north, 陈 Chén rules the southern coast, etc.

• 王 Wáng - 1st in 15 locations
  
• 李 Lǐ - 1st in 6 locations
  
• 陈 Chén - 1st in 4 locations
  
• 张 Zhāng - 1st in 3 locations
  
• 刘 Liú - 1st in 1 location
  
• 黄 Huáng - 1st in 1 location
  

The winner is…王 Wáng with 15 locations!

7) Mainland China vs. Taiwan vs. Hong Kong

I thought this would be an interesting comparison. I wanted to include Macau as well, but I had difficulty finding a list. Here is the Hong Kong data source.

Arrows: green = higher than Mainland rank, red = lower than Mainland rank
Circles: orange = in Mainland top 10 but missing from the HK and/or TW top 10, blue = outside Mainland top 10

I was actually surprised how similar the top 10s are for Taiwan and Hong Kong!

I also wanted to compare Taiwan and Hong Kong to Fujian and Guangdong, respectively. These are the two provinces in Mainland China that they are closest to.

Now, I’m no history expert, but I know that a lot of Taiwanese have roots in Fujian, so it makes a lot of sense that their top 10 lists look so similar. I don’t know much about the history of migration to Hong Kong, but as such a major economic center, I’m guessing people from all over China came to Hong Kong.

Thank you!

If you actually read this whole post, I’m impressed. Thank you! 

I initially began working on this post in September 2021. Needless to say, this post ended up being a lot longer and taking up a lot more of my time than I had anticipated. I asked my dad to read over an earlier draft of this post for me, and he literally asked me, “why are you doing this?” I didn’t really have a concrete answer. I just thought it would be interesting to explore surnames a bit. And so here we are :)

Extended list - 大陆25大姓氏

1. 李 Lǐ
2. 王 Wáng
3. 张 Zhāng
4. 刘 Liú
5. 陈 Chén
6. 杨 Yáng
7. 赵 Zhào
8. 黄 Huáng
9. 周 Zhōu
10. 吴 Wú
11. 徐 Xú
12. 孙 Sūn
13. 胡 Hú
14. 朱 Zhū
15. 高 Gāo
16. 林 Lín
17. 何 Hé
18. 郭 Guō
19. 马 Mǎ
20. 罗 Luó
21. 梁 Liáng
22. 宋 Sòng
23. 郑 Zhèng
24. 谢 Xiè
25. 韩 Hán