One of the most well-known resources in the Chinese language about family names is Zhonghua Baijiaxing 中华百家姓, literally, One Hundred Family Names of China. While the great majority of people with Han Chinese ancestry fall under one of the 100 surnames, China being both ancient and multiethnic, there are 8,155 known historic and current family names among all recognized ethnic groups of China.

According to Wang Wanbang 王万邦, in his work Xingshi Cidian 姓氏词典 (Zhengzhou 郑州: Henan People’s Press 河南人民出版社, 1991), writes that the origin of Chinese surnames is similar to the Native American concept of totem. As such, earliest family names were names of animals (e.g. 马/horse, 乌/raven, 凤/phoenix, 龙/dragon), plants (e.g. 梅/plum) and natural phenomena (e.g. 云/cloud, 风/wind). Later as the civilization developed, some newer family names came from particular locations (夏, 唐, etc.).

In the 1950s a census record in Taiwan (Republic of China) found that in Taiwan area there were 700 or so known surnames in use at the time.

Some family names consist of two letters, or over three letters. Most family names that contain more than three letters are transliterations of Manchurian, Mongolian or Tibetan names, such as seen in the name of the Last Emperor of Qing, Aisin Gioro Puyi 爱新觉罗 溥仪.

Since the fall of the Empire and rise of the Republic of China, and subsequently the People’s Republic of China in the mainland, the Manchu people lost its political prominence and some people sinified their names to Han Chinese style. For instance, Emperor Puyi’s brother Puren 溥任 changed his name to Jin Youzhi 金友之. The letter Jin 金 means gold, and the Manchurian word Aisin is gold. Curiously, this family name is the same as the Korean Kim, and due to the proximity of Manchuria (northeastern Chinese provinces today) and its prominent Korean-Chinese population, it would be difficult today to figure out if a certain Mr. Jin in Shenyang or Dangdong would be Korean-Chinese or Manchurian-Chinese.