I was schadenfreudically surprised the other day when a friend of mine, native Mandarin speaker, stopped short while reading through a list of teachers and asked her daughter: “Uh, what’s that teacher’s name?”

鄢老师！Yān Lǎoshī: Teacher Yān, of course!

One of the pleasant surprises in Chinese characters is how few surnames you have to learn, at least in the beginning. The common man isn’t called 老百姓 (lǎobǎixìng, roughly “old one hundred surnames”) for nothing. Heck, you can probably get away with a dozen, speedreading through business cards like, well, like nobody’s business: “Mr. Liu! Ms. Wang! Lawyer Zhang…”

But then the long tail hits. You’re innocently amusing the crowd with your business card skills at the latest schmoozathon, when all of a sudden… “Uhhh, sorry what’s your name?” [Not that it matters, I suppose: if you’re a foreigner you wouldn’t be expected to know and if you’re a native, well if you haven’t seen that surname you can bet its owner has to explain it every frickin’ time anyway.]

How many surnames are out there, and how common are they? It’s pretty easy to come across claims like this:

中国古今姓氏已超过22000个
目前正在使用和汉姓约3500个
100个常见姓占全国人口87％
占全国人口1％以上姓氏19个

There are more than 22,000 ancient and modern Chinese surnames
Presently there are about 3500 Han surnames in use
The most common 100 surnames comprise* 87% of the population
There are 19 surnames that each cover more than 1% of the population

It may all be true, but what I’d like to see is an actual frequency list. For our Teacher 鄢, how rare a bird is he?

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*What if we just declared a change of regime, an end to the tyranny of those who swear that wholes comprise parts and never vice versa, no matter how or where the usage evidence presents itself? It would be bloodless coup (I hope) and, just as importantly, it would result not in the exile of the former rulers but rather a more modest sequestration. They could spend a few years in the nearest monastery, repeating vows of fealty to the rule of evidence over uninformed reflex.