Chinanews, Beijing, February 7 – According to the statistics from Yuan Yida, an expert on Chinese surnames, there are only 4,100 surnames in China, while there were some 24,000 in the past.
Yuan collected the statistics from some 300 million people. He has found that most current surnames consist of only one Chinese character, covering most common Chinese characters, despite that there are some surnames that can not be found even in large dictionaries.
Many Chinese can't believe that there are only 4,100 surnames left in China. “In fact, there might be less than 4,100 surnames currently, as we have only found records of some rare surnames, but unable to find any persons with them,” said Yuan.