Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Greater China, Korea, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Written Chinese names begin with surnames, unlike the Western tradition in which surnames are written last. Around 2,000 Han Chinese surnames are currently in use, but the great proportion of Han Chinese people use only a relatively small number of these surnames; 19 surnames are used by around half of the Han Chinese people, while 100 surnames are used by around 87% of the population. A report in 2019 gives the most common Chinese surnames as Wang and Li, each shared by over 100 million people in China. The remaining eight of the top ten most common Chinese surnames are Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Wu and Zhou.
Many village names in China are linked to surnames. Pictured is Jiajiayuan (贾家源), i.e. "Jia Family's Spring", in Honggang Town, Tongshan County, Hubei
Li or Lee is a common Chinese surname, it is the 4th name listed in the famous Hundred Family Surnames. Li is one of the most common surnames in Asia, shared by 92.76 million people in China, and more than 100 million in Asia. It is the second-most common surname in China as of 2018, the second-most common surname in Hong Kong, the most common surname in Macau and the 5th most common surname in Taiwan, where it is usually romanized as "Lee". The surname is pronounced as in Cantonese, Lí (poj) in Taiwanese Hokkien, but is often spelled as "Lee" in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Thailand and many overseas Chinese communities. In Macau, it is also spelled as "Lei". In Indonesia it is commonly spelled as "Lie". The common Korean surname, "Lee", and the Vietnamese surname, "Lý", are both derived from Li and written with the same Chinese character (李). The character also means "plum" or "plum tree".
Li Yuan (Emperor Gaozu), founder of the Tang dynasty
Lý Thái Tổ, founder of the Vietnamese Lý dynasty
Lee Family Temple, Kinmen, Taiwan