By far the most common two-syllable Chinese family name in China is Ouyang (NB: this should not be written Ou-yang, Ou-Yang, or Ou Yang), with it representing more than twelve times as many people as the next most common name on the list: Shangguan.
| Surname | Fùxìng (複姓/复姓) | Number of people in China with this surname |
|---|---|---|
| Ouyang | 欧阳 | 1,112,000 |
| Shangguan | 上官 | 88,000 |
| Huangfu | 皇甫 | 64,000 |
| Linghu | 令狐 | 55,000 |
| Zhuge | 诸葛 | 48,000 |
| Situ | 司徒 | 47,000 |
| Sima | 司马 | 23,000 |
| Shentu | 申屠 | 19,000 |
| Xiahou | 夏侯 | 11,000 |
| Helan | 贺兰 | 10,000 |
| Wanyan | 完颜 | 6,000 |
Those figures for the most common two-syllable Chinese family names (commonly called “two-character” family names) total 1.495 million, or about 1.5 million, which is not an inconsiderable number but still just a drop in the bucket compared with China’s population of some 1.41 billion. Only about one tenth of 1 percent (0.11%) of people in China have such names.
The percentage is a bit less in Taiwan. The most common doubled surname in Taiwan, however, is Zhangjian (張簡/张简), which doesn’t appear at all on the list of the most common disyllabic family names in China. In Taiwan, Ouyang is second.
Further reading:
- Two-syllable Taiwanese family names, Pinyin News, May 15, 2013
- older figures, but with other useful information: 85 percent of Han in China have two-syllable given names: report, Pinyin News, August 10, 2008
source: 《2020 nián quánguó xìngmíng bàogào》 fābù (《二〇二〇年全国姓名报告》发布), Gōng’ānbù wǎngzhàn (公安部网站), February 2, 2021