China’s Name Space Problem
Yahoo reports that Chinese surname shortage sparks rethink.
[tease]
In a country of around 1.3 billion people, about 85 percent share only 100 surnames, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Ministry of Public Security in April and published in the China Daily newspaper on Tuesday.
The survey found 92 million people shared the surname Li, while 88 million were called Zhang. A further seven surnames — including Chen, Zhou and Lin — are held by at least 20 million Chinese.