>>> The prototypical Chinese name has three characters, a single surname followed by a two-character given name. A smaller number of Chinese people only have a

>>> The prototypical Chinese name has three characters, a single surname followed by a two-character given name. A smaller number of Chinese people only have a single given name, and a very few have two surname characters. >I'm not sure if this is correct. It's not. The distribution of one- and two-character given names is pretty even in China. >Another interesting characteristic of Chinese names is that given names are very diverse and varied, while family names come from a small set (something like a hundred or so). This is opposite from the West (or at least America) where given names are pretty restricted (e.g. lots of Johns and Emilys) but family names have a lot of variation (probably due to all the immigration). You know, maybe we should change how we think about the ordering. Instead of family-given or given-family, it's clearly restricted-arbitrary.