The Hundred Family Surnames, commonly known as Bai Jia Xing, also translated as Hundreds of Chinese Surnames, is a classic Chinese text composed of common Chinese surnames. An unknown author compiled the book during the Song dynasty (960–1279). The book lists 507 surnames. Of these, 441 are single-character surnames and 66 are double-character surnames. About 800 names have been derived from the original ones.
Hundred Family Surnames poem written in Chinese characters and Phagspa script, from Shilin Guangji written by Chen Yuanjing in the Yuan dynasty
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