



This was based on a database of 1,644,911 names in China.





10 characters: 594 names
11 characters: 272 names
12 characters: 94 names
13 characters: 33 names
14 characters: 5 names
15 characters: 1 name









Further reading:

3 thoughts on “85 percent of Han in China have two-syllable given names: report

  1. “91.06% Chinese have three-character names”

    I suppose this includes people with 2-character family names, like ?? and ??. Depending on whether the focus is on the total length of the name, or the length of the personal name, these people mught have to be shifted to the second group…

  2. Some families followed an ancestral book of names where it indicates that particular character should be in the given name of a particular generation.

    Some who wanted their kids to have three characters names just wanted the siblings either have the same second or third character so that they’ll just brainstorm the other character to differentiate.

  3. This practice of a “generation character” was very much in use in Korea until recently — less so now but still happens. It’s called a ???, tollim cha, in Korean. In some families, like the ? family (all Koreans with that family names are from one of the two branches of the Min family), you can have people with the same generation character and have a great difference in age.

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