About 1.16 million Beijingers are with the family name of Wang, accounting for 10.3 percent of the capital city's total population.

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The figure is from a report on the regional research of China's family names.

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The report shows that altogether 2,041 family names were used by 11.28 million Beijingers who belong to the Han nationality. About 1,831 family names are single character, with 210 surnames being double characters.

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Following Wang, Zhang is the second largest surname in Beijing, as more than one million Beijingers are surnamed Zhang.

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The third to fifth most frequently used surnames in the city are Li, Liu and Zhao. About 38.7 percent of Beijing's population are surnamed the five most popular family names as Wang, Zhang, Li, Liu and Zhao.

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Earlier this year, the Ministry of Public Security issued a survey result saying that Wang has overtaken Li as the most common surname in China.

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In the largest ever survey of its kind, based on data from the national household registration system which covers almost all of China's citizens, 7.25 out of every 100 Chinese people had the family name of Wang.

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Li is second largest with 7.19 percent of the total population sharing the name and Zhang is third with 6.83 percent.

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According to another survey made by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), only 4,100 different Chinese surnames have been found to exist out of a sample of 300 million Chinese people.

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It means more than 80 percent of Chinese surnames have become extinct since 6,000 years ago when more than 24,000 surnames were in common use, the CAS report said.

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 15, 2007)