Chinese family names/clan name/surname came into being some 5,000 years ago.There are more than 700 family names in China, of which 20 are common.

In China, the family name precedes the given name, which is occasionally followed by the secon name or the western equivalent of a first name. For example, Huang Hua would be called Mr. Huang, and Hua would be his given name. However, some Chinese will switch the order of their names when they are dealing with foreigners. Further, many Chinse adopt given names, many of which are Western names. Married women rarely take their husband's family name.

The most commonly used 20 family names are:(王) Wang ,(陈) Chen,(李) Li ,(张) Zhang ,(刘) Liu ,(杨) Yang ,(黄) Huang ,(吴) Wu ,(林) Lin ,(周) Zhou ,(叶) Ye ,(赵) Zhao ,(吕) Lu ,(徐) Xu ,(孙) Sun ,(朱) Zhu ,(高) Gao ,(马) Ma ,(梁) Liang ,(郭) Guo.

Chinese family names distributed differently according to regions. The north was dominated by (李) Li, (王) Wang, (张) Zhang, and (刘) Liu; the south was dominated by (陈) Chen, (赵) Zhao, (黄) Huang, (林) Lin, and (吴) Wu.

Most commonly occurring Chinese family names have only one character; however, about twenty double-character family names have survived into the modern time. Some famous ones include Sima (司马), Zhuge (诸葛), Ouyang (欧阳 occasionally Anglicizedd, or rather, Irishized, as O'Young), and Situ (司徒 in Cantonese: Szeto). There are family names with three or more characters, but those are extremely rare and most likely have non-Han origin, for example, Aixinjueluo (愛新覺羅, also romanized as Aisin-gioro, which means "Golden Family {金氏}" in the Manchu language), the family name of the Manchu royal family of the Qing dynasty.