Do you have a friend named 'Zhang Wei'

Chinese film stars and singers who have similar names: Zhang Yuxi, Zhang Xinyu, Zhang Xinyi, Zhang Hanyun, Zhang Xinyuan, Zhang Yuqi, Zhang Yixing and Zhang Shaohan. [Photo/IC]

It is not surprising to meet someone who shares the same name with you in China. And believe it or not, "Zhang Wei" is the most "popular" Chinese name, according to recent information from the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

Some 300,000 people are named Zhang Wei. "Wei" (伟), "fang" (芳), "li" (丽) and "min" (敏) are the most often used characters in names.

And "ying" (英) crowns the TOP 20 most repeated characters in Chinese names, which was used by 41,000,153 people.

"Hua" (华), "yu" (玉), "xiu" (秀), "wen" (文), "ming" (明), "hong" (红), "mei" (梅), and "yun" (云) are also popular choices.

"Zihan" (子涵) is the most welcomed given name. There are 6,826 people named "Li Zihan", 10,032 named "Zhang Zihan", and 12,190 named "Wang Zihan" in China.

Chinese parents prefer to match the following characters to create names that sound acceptable to both boys and girls: "zi" (子), "zi" (梓), "zi" (紫), "xuan" (萱), "xuan" (暄), "xuan" (瑄), "yu" (雨), "yu" (语) and "han" (涵).

More than 1.36 billion Chinese with 23, 813 surnames need to find a proper name from a limited vocabulary. Repetition is unavoidable.

Another funny thing is that many people can't distinguish the following Chinese film stars and singers, for they have the same surname "Zhang" and similar given name "Xinyu", "Xinyuan", "Xinyi", "Yixing", "Yuxi", "Yuqi", "Shaohan", and "Hanyun".