Good Characters, Inc. Blog

New statistics from China: 

• More than 85 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people use 3-character names.
• More than 160 million people have 2-character names.
• About 2 million people have names of more than 4 characters.
• The longest name found among Han Chinese reaches 15 characters.
• Nearly 1,000 people have names with 10 or more characters.
• Although they attempt to limit Han Chinese names to 6 characters, regulations allow ethnic minorities to use longer names in their native languages and transliterations in Chinese. The latter are required for formal documents.

Links:

• Name game: most Chinese use 3 characters, some use 10 or more
• National Citizen Identity Information Center (NCIIC) (Chinese)
• The longest name found among Han Chinese reaches 15 characters (Chinese)
  漢族公民最長姓名十五個字