Mandrin Baby Names With Meanings

Chinese names are different from Western names. They start with the family name followed by the given name. The family name usually has one syllable. All the top 100 Chinese family names have only one syllable and these surnames cover about 85 percent of mainly China’s citizens. The most common three family names in mainland China are Li (李), Wang (王) and Zhang (张), shared by more than 270 million people. In Taiwan, Chen is the most common surname, taking up 11.14 percent of Taiwan’s population, according to the 2016 census.

When deciding on a given name, there are often a few traditional conventions that are followed. It is often the case that males of the same generation in a traditional family share the first character of their given names. These generation names are worked out long in advance and cannot be changed – they are written in the history of the family, or a poem which expresses best wishes for the family. Some given names represent the decade of a person was born