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Family names can be unique or come in large numbers.In different countries some names are the most popular.
Here is the listing (alphabetical by country names):
- González
- Rodríguez
- López
- García
- Gómez
(on January 1, 2002)
- Peeters 33,273
- Janssens 31,529
- Maes 25,654
- Jacobs 20,229
- Mertens 18,927
- Willems 18,604
- Claes 16,822
- Goossens 16,202
- Wouters 15,950
- De Smet 14,491
These are all names of Flemish origin; the most popular French name is Dubois (about 11,000).
- da Silva
- da Costa
- dos Santos
- Souza
- Oliveira
- Cavalcante or Cavalcanti
- Carvalho
- Pereira
- Menezes
- Ribeiro
Most of Brazilian surnames refer to poor colonists and convicts who were the first immigrants into the nation, in 16th century. Since many of them had no family name, they were called "da Costa" when living near the sea coast or "da Silva" (from the jungle) if lived inland. The surname "dos Santos" (from the saints) was given to orphan children. Other common people names include some from Iberian origin, such as Pires, Rodrigues, Lopes, Mendes, Fernandes - notice that they end with -es, not -ez as in Spanish. "New Christians" (converted Jews) adopted names after trees (Pereira, Oliveira), geographic (Ribeiro, Matos), or animals (Coelho, Peixe). The middle and upper classes generally have non-Portuguese family names, especially Italian, German and Jewish, from more recent immigrations (this is reflected in the surnames of several Brazilian presidents).
- Ivanov
- Petrov
- Georgiev
- Dimitrov
Main articles: Chinese family name, List of common Chinese surnamesThe following is a list of the top 80 Chinese surnames with their Mandarin, Cantonese and Minnan transliterations. The "Other" columns are common transliterations, used before the formalization and popularization of existing Romanizations, still can be fo
- (based on statistics published in 姓氏人名用字分析統計 BeijingBeijing Sh Abbreviation: ( pinyin: Jing The Forbidden City Origin of Name bei north jing capital put together: northern capital Pronounced''Bay-jing (J as in joy Area Total % of national Ranked 29th 16,808 km˛ 0. 175% Population Total ( 2001) % of nationa, PRCPRC is a common abbreviation for: People's Republic of China Palestinian Red Crescent Popular Resistance Committees TLAs., 1990Events January January 3 Former leader of Panama Manuel Noriega surrenders to American forces. January 7 The Leaning Tower of Pisa is closed to the public due to safety concerns. January 9 Lt Gen Bazilio Olara Okello The man who led the coup aginst Dr Apo)
- Chinese family names come in large numbers. In the 1990 study, the top 200 family names accounted for over 96% of the random sample of 174,900 persons, over 500 other names accounted for the remainder. The sample was taken from 1982Events January January 6 William Bonin is convicted of being the "freeway killer". January 8 AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappears in the Sahara du census data.
- (王) WangThis article is about Wang as surnames. See Chinese noble and Korean nobility for royalty rank. Chinese surname Wang ( in pinyin: Wang; in penkyamp & Jyutping: Wong4) is one of the most common Chinese family names. In a 2002 study, Wang was ranked number2
- (陈) Chen2
- (李) LiLi or li may refer to: Lee or Li is a transliteration of several Chinese and Korean family names, see Li (Chinese name) and Lee (Korean name). For the Confucian concept Li , see Confucianism. An ethnic group (, li zu): see Li Chinese. An abbreviation of n3
- (张) ZhangZhang ( Traditional Chinese: , Simplified Chinese: , pinyin: Zhng, Wade-Giles: Chang, Yale: Jeung, Penkyamp: Zoeng or Cheung) is among the most common Chinese surnames. There are currently well over 100 million people worldwide with this surname. The use1
- (刘) Liu2
- (杨) Yang2
- (黄) Huang2
- (吴) Wu2
- (林) Lin2
- (周) Zhou1
- (叶) Ye4
- (赵) Zhao4
- (吕) Lü3
- (徐) Xu2
- (孙) Sun1
- (朱) Zhu1
- (高) Gao1
- (马) Ma3
- (梁) Liang2
- (郭) Guo1
- In a different study ( 1987) which combined data from mainland China and Taiwan (sample size of 570,000 persons), the outcome was a bit different. The number one Chinese family name was (李) Li3 at 7.9% of the sample, followed by (王) Wang2 at 7.4% and (张) Zhang1 at 7.1%, the study showed that the top 19 names covered 55.6% and the top 100 names covered 87% of the sample. Chinese family names distributed differently according to regions. The north was dominated by (李) Li3, (王) Wang2, (张) Zhang1, and (刘) Liu2; the south was dominated by (陈) Chen2, (赵) Zhao4, (黄) Huang2, (林) Lin2, and (吴) Wu2. There were over 450 family names in Beijing, but there were less than 300 family names in Guangdong and Fujian. Apparently the distribution of the statistics was significantly affected by the bias from the Taiwanese data.
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