China is running out of names, 85% of its 1.3 billion population share just 100 surnames. Soon China may allow children to take a combination of their parents’ family names to avoid confusion and problems in daily life.

There are now at least 100,000 people called Wang Tao alone. In April, a survey reported by Xinhua News Agency said that Wang was the most common surname in China, with about 93 million people sharing the name. That was followed by Li with about 92 million and Zhang with about 87 million.

Currently, China’s Marriage Law says that a newborn can have the surname of either the father or the mother, but does not mention a combined surname. The newspaper did not give any other details when the change would be implemented.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 9:48 pm and is filed under Baby Names. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.