a few months back i met a person named yan, 闫. it’s not a name i had ever seen before that point. i’d been noticing a lot of surnames that were new to me and as a fan of both rare characters and of names, i’d end up writing down the name and looking it up when i got home. another from around that time was 水, shui, meaning water. it’s a common enough caracter but not one that i had realised could also be used as a family name.

so i started collecting names. it actually went back further to my third month in china after i met someone named 卜. but recently, when more than a few new ones surfaced i did a couple searches online for comprehensive lists of family names but often didn’t find much more than lists of the 100 most common names or of the traditional hundred common names. that was never good enough. then i started searching nciku or rummaging through dimsum looking for other names i might expect to see. that worked but was very time consuming. i was much more interested in finding a sort of 康熙字典 of family names. so far, no luck.

i’ve therefore decided to compile my own. since i’m busy studying for the HSK and getting things in order for my grad program, i can’t afford to dedicate countless hours to it, but i am going to make this a somewhat serious effort so long as it doesn’t take more than a couple months.

care to help? leave a comment with a rare surname you’ve encountered and i’ll be sure to add it to the list.