Chinese family name is one of the hundreds or thousands of family names that have been historically used by Han Chinese and Sinicized Chinese ethnic groups in overseas Chinese communities. In ancient times two types of surnames , family names ( 姓 ; pinyin : xìng) and clan names ( 氏 ; pinyin: shì), existed.
The colloquial expressions lao bai xing (老百姓; lit. "old hundred surnames"), and bǎi xìng ( 百 姓 , lit. "hundred surnames") are used in Chinese to mean "ordinary folks", "the people", or "commoners." Bǎi jiā xìng ( 百 家 姓 ) is also used to call the list of one hundred most common surnames .
Chinese family names are patrilineal , passed from father to children. (In cases of adoption, the adoptee usually also takes the same surname.) Chinese women, after marriage, typically retain their birth surname. Historically, however, only Chinese men possessed xìng (family name), in addition to shì; the women had only the latter, and took on their husband's xìng after marriage.
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