Society

100,000 share the name Wang Tao

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-08-03 17:03

There are 4,100 family names for some 1.3 billion people in China, of which 94 percent use one of the 300 big family names, such as Li, Zhang, or Wang, according to a two-year national name survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

When a man calls his friend Wang Tao, he realizes that everyone there has the same name. [Leng Jie]

"The problem is getting worse and shows no signs of abating," Wang Daliang, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences told the Guiyang Evening Paper.

According to his analysis, the most frequently used name in China is Wang Tao, with about 100,000 people bearing the name, including the table tennis world champion, the first female academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a variety of football stars, calligraphers, musicians and even heroes.

Having exactly the same spellings with others brings no good. Confusions rise in daily lives, such as when using insurance, placing private deposits, and even making phone calls.