What do you know about Chinese people's family names, besides that they are in reverse order compared to the Western-style ones?

A conference was held in Fuzhou, east China's Fujian Province, on Thursday, to promote the application of Chinese surnames for the UNESCO program "Memory of the World."

Fuzhou will host the 44th session of the World Heritage Committee in 2020, and by putting forward the application program, experts are hoping to introduce the culture behind Chinese family names to the world.

Yuan Yida, an expert on the Chinese family name culture from the Chinese Academy of Science, said that it is also an opportunity to combine this specific culture with art and tourism. If the Chinese culture of family names could be enlisted in Memory of the World, the relevant culture could be further promoted and standardized. 

ABC of Chinese family names

More than 200 attendees have committed to better protect and transmit the culture related to the Chinese family names, which has a long history and is closely connected with the Chinese culture and values.

Chinese people usually talk about the "Hundred Family Surnames" when the topic comes up. But according to the current archive, the Chinese have at least 5,662 surnames altogether, and 3,484 of them are single-character surnames, and 2,032 are two-character surnames. Another 146 are three-character surnames, which are rarely seen today.

This figure does not include surnames adopted from surnames of the ethnic groups, such as those from Inner Mongolia and Manchu people who changed their surnames into single-character Han names during the Yuan Dynasty (1271 - 1368) and Qing Dynasty (1616 - 1912).

Historians believe that Chinese surnames lay the foundation for Chinese families, as well as traditional cultures. The derivation of the surname could be closely linked to the development of the social system, alternation of dynasties, as well as the essence of civilization.

You Jiarui, expert on the Chinese surnames, said that the culture of surnames also bears with it the Chinese people's deep desire to seek their roots and their value of families, and therefore is a "living fossil."

During the conference, several projections related to the surnames, including the compiling of a dictionary of Chinese surnames, have been launched as well.