Editing Chinese name (section)

== Variations ==
===Unusual names===
{{See also|Naming laws in China}}

Because the small number of Chinese surnames leads to confusion in social environments, and because some Chinese parents have a desire to give individuality, some Chinese have received unusual given names. As of April 2009, about 60 million Chinese people have unusual characters in their names. A 2006 report by the [[Chinese public security bureau]] stated that of about 55,000 Chinese characters used in the People's Republic of China, only 32,232 of those are supported by the ministry's computers. The PRC government has asked individuals with unusual names to change them so they can get new computer-readable public identity cards, and the diversity prevents them from receiving new identity cards if they do not change their names.<ref name="NYT"/>

Beginning in at least 2003, the PRC government has been writing a list of standardized characters for everyday usage in life, which would be the pool of characters to select from when a child is given his or her name. Originally the limits were to go in place in 2005. In April 2009, the list had been revised 70 times, and it still has not been put into effect.<ref name="NYT"/>

Wang Daliang, a [[China Youth University for Political Sciences]] linguistics scholar, said that "Using obscure names to avoid duplication of names or to be unique is not good. Now a lot of people are perplexed by their names. The computer cannot even recognize them and people cannot read them. This has become an obstacle in communication."<ref name="NYT"/> Zhou Youyong, the dean of the [[Southeast University]] law school, argued that the ability to choose the name of one's children is a fundamental right, so the PRC government should be careful when making new naming laws.<ref name="Xinhua"/>

While the vast majority of Han Chinese names consist of two or three characters, there are some Han Chinese with longer names, up to 15 characters.<ref name="Xinhua"/> In addition, [[Transcription into Chinese characters|transliteration of ethnic languages into Chinese characters]] often results in long names.

=== Taiwan ===
{{see also|Naming customs of Taiwanese indigenous peoples}}
[[Han Chinese|Han]] family names in Taiwan are similar to those in southeast China, as most families trace their origins to places such as [[Fujian]] and [[Guangdong]].  [[Indigenous Taiwanese]] have also been forced [[Naming customs of Taiwanese indigenous peoples|to adopt Chinese names]] as part of enforced [[Sinicization]]. The popularity distribution of family names in Taiwan as a whole differs somewhat from the distribution of names among all Han Chinese, with the family name [[Chen (surname)|Chen]] ({{zhi|c=陳}}) being particularly more common (about 11% in Taiwan, compared to about 3% in China). Local variations also exist.

Given names that consist of one character are much less common in Taiwan than on the [[Mainland China|mainland]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2012}}

A traditional practice, now largely supplanted, was choosing deliberately unpleasant given names to ward off bad omens and evil spirits. For example, a boy facing a serious illness might be renamed Ti-sái ({{zhi|c=豬屎}}, <small>lit.</small> "Pig Shit") to indicate to the evil spirits that he was not worth their trouble. Similarly, a girl from a poor family might have the name Bóng-chī ({{zhi|c=罔市}}, <small>lit.</small> "No Takers").

Nicknames ({{zhi|c=囝仔名}}, ''gín-á-miâ'', "child names") are common and generally adopt the [[northern and southern China|Southern Chinese]] practice of affixing the prefix "A-" ({{zhi|c=阿}}) to the last syllable of a person's name. Although these names are rarely used in formal contexts, there are a few public figures who are well known by their nicknames, including former president [[Chen Shui-bian|A-bian]] and the singer [[A-Mei|A-mei]].