Chinese Last Name Generator

China has fewer distinct surnames than almost any other large country: roughly 6,000 are in use, and the top 100 cover about 85 percent of the population. The three most common, Wang (王, king), Li (李, plum) and Zhang (张, to draw a bow), are each shared by around 90 million people, which is why Chinese speakers call the general public 'the old hundred surnames' (lao baixing). Most surnames are a single character and almost all come from one of four sources: an ancient state or fief (Zhao, Wu, Zhou, Qin, Lu, Song), an official title or occupation (Sima 'master of horses', Situ, Tao 'potter', Shi 'scribe'), a place or landscape feature (Lin 'forest', Jiang 'river', Shi 'stone', Shan 'mountain'), or a royal clan name such as Ji or Ying.

Two-character surnames like Ouyang, Zhuge, Murong, Huangfu and Dongfang are rare in real life but very common in wuxia and historical fiction because they sound aristocratic. Outside mainland China the same character is romanized differently: Huang becomes Wong in Hong Kong and Ng or Ooi in Singapore and Penang; Chen becomes Chan in Cantonese and Tan in Hokkien; Zhang is Cheung, Teo or Chang. Each entry below gives the romanization, the character and the literal meaning of that character, with the regional form noted where it applies.