Chinese Names
In Chinese culture the last name is the same for all family members and usually is only one syllable. A Chinese name is written with the family name (surname) first and the given name next. “Tom Cruise” as a Chinese name would be “Cruise Tom”. It isn’t unusual for someone to introduce himself by his last name because there are more than a billion first names. For instance, Yao Ming would be addressed as ‘Mr. Yao’, not ‘Mr. Ming’.
Some Chinese adopt a westernized name by simply reversing the “surname given-name” order to “given-name surname”, or with a Western first name together with their surname, which is then written in the usual Western order with the surname last Other Chinese people sometimes take a combined name, consisting of Western first name, surname, and Chinese given name, in that order, mostly in Hong Kong, or in the order of Western first name, Chinese given name, and surname.
Traditional naming schemes often followed a pattern of using generation names as part of a two-character given name. However, this is less used today in China, where many given names use only one character. However, it is still the norm among the Chinese populations of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia.