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How many surnames have appeared in the history of China?
How many surnames have China people used throughout the ages? Yuan Yida, an associate researcher at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that China has more than 22,000 surnames.

These 22,000 surnames include China surnames of ethnic minorities. For example, the ancient and modern surnames of Mongolian, Manchu, Tibetan, Yi and other ethnic minorities, the total number of surnames of these four ethnic groups in China is at least 4,000. With the changes of the times, many surnames have disappeared.

According to Mr. Yuan Yida, in addition to the compound surnames in the Han nationality, the most important missing surnames are the Chinese-English multi-character surnames of ethnic minorities. For example, the Manchu Eight Banners surnamed Tu originally belonged to the Northern Song Dynasty, but almost all of them changed their surnames to Du in the early Qing Dynasty and became an important part of Du in Northeast China. As for Tuktan and Tuktan, no one has used them.

Mr. Yuan Yida, according to the sampling data of the third population census of the National Bureau of Statistics, according to the equidistant sampling of the population in various places, and in strict accordance with statistical principles, found that the three largest surnames in China were Li, Wang and Zhang, accounting for 7.9%, 7.4% and 7. 1% of the total population respectively. The total population of the three surnames has reached 270 million, making them the three largest people with the same surnames in the world.

According to Mr. Yuan Yida's research, there are about 3,500 Han surnames used by contemporary China people. Among the 100 common surnames, 87% of the population in China is concentrated. Among them, there are 19 surnames accounting for more than 1% of the national population, namely, Li, Wang, Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Zhao, Huang, Zhou, Wu, Xu, Sun, Hu, Zhu, Gao, Lin, He, Guo and Ma. Historically, about half of China's population is concentrated in this 19 people with the same surname. In addition, the geographical distribution of people with the same surname in China is not balanced. In the northern region, it is the first surname, accounting for 9.9% of the population, followed by Li, Zhang and Liu; In southern China, Chen is the first surname, accounting for 10.6% of the total population, followed by Li, Huang, Lin and Zhang. In the transitional Yangtze River valley, the first surname is Li, accounting for about 7% of the population, followed by Wang, Zhang, Chen and Liu.

Mr. Yuan Yida found that in every province of China, some surnames appear much more frequently than other provinces. Such as Liang and Luo in Guangdong, Liang and Lu in Guangxi, Zheng in Fujian, Cai in Taiwan Province, Wang in Anhui, Xu and Zhu in Jiangsu, Mao and Shen in Zhejiang, Hu and Liao in Jiangxi, Hu in Hubei, Tan in Hunan, He and Deng in Sichuan, Wu in Guizhou, Yang in Yunnan, Cheng in Henan, Gao in Gansu, Wan in Ningxia and Wan in Shaanxi.

Mr. Yuan Yida said: "With the development of science, surnames are more than just a culture. At present, a branch of human population genetics has been formed-surname population genetics ... China people's surnames and their distribution are unique national conditions in China, which will involve the origin of the Chinese nation, the distribution of genetic resources left by ancestors, the root-seeking at home and abroad today, the unification of the country, the future population development trend and land use, etc., so it is of great significance. 』