Strange Surnames (as in not too common)

[ouyangjun]

It's not super rare from what I understand, but I've only met one person with the surname 刁... he was my previous driver, 刁司机. 

[skylee]

I think 巫 is not that rare. A few years ago I had a boss called 巫.

 

刁 seems rarer. But my father had a good friend with this name.

[ouyangjun]

5 hours ago, skylee said:

刁 seems rarer. But my father had a good friend with this name.

 

I just did a little research, and according to Baidu Baike it does look rare from a numbers perspective:  Baidue Baike info on 刁

 

"刁氏人口总数在中国排行上为第二百四十五位，人口约三十七万余，占全国人口的0.023%"

 

So it looks like only 0.023% of China's population has this surname.

 

[Lu]

10 hours ago, skylee said:

I think 巫 is not that rare. A few years ago I had a boss called 巫.

 

刁 seems rarer. But my father had a good friend with this name.

I'll just repeat what I said on the first page: this entire thread is

甲: I came across rare surname X.

乙: I know someone with that surname.

It's fun :-) I suppose between us all we've met or come across all the surnames.

There's an author named 巫昂 and I seem to recall a character named 刁 in a book I translated.

[lips]

I used to have a staff whose surname was 池。

I also met someone whose surname was 时。

I know quite a few people whose surname is 司徒。According to Baidu, it's rare over all of China (8 times rarer than 刁）！

[Publius]

巫啟賢 (singer) is quite a celebrity I believe.

刁德一 (fictional character) was a household name during the cultural revolution period.

I had a classmate in college with the surname 師. We liked to call him 老師.

Off the top of my head, some people I know with relatively rare surnames:

索 (middle school)

滑 (high school)

綦 (high school)

戰 (colleague)

Two-syllable surnames are quite rare these days. I only know one 歐陽 (and for some time I wasn't even aware, because people simply called her 歐師傅).

[Lu]

The other day I met a tourguide surnamed 党. His full name (which I am not going to post here) meant something along the lines of 'the Party does great things'. With a name like that, I'd expect someone born in the 1950s, but he looked like 70后 or 80后. Unfortunately it was not the right setting to ask him what his parents' thinking had been.

[roddy]

Got one! 支.

[Phil Tsien]

On 4/18/2019 at 8:27 PM, Lu said:

Unfortunately it was not the right setting to ask him what his parents' thinking had been.

He may don't know who his parents is.  It's true. In China, sometimes in an orphanage, when an orphan is without a name (eg being abandoned as a baby), people in the orphanage will come up with a name using the surname 党, since he or she is breed by the government. 

This is just some of the case. Not all the people with such a surname was once an orphan. 

[roddy]

梅. Was all set to add a note to say it looked like they'd left the surname off, but it turns out 梅 can be a surname. Never seen it before, or at least not noticed. Mind you, if 李 can be a surname, why not...

[imron]

2 hours ago, roddy said:

Never seen it before

A friend of mine (who unfortunately passed away recently) has this surname.

[Lu]

3 hours ago, roddy said:

梅. Was all set to add a note to say it looked like they'd left the surname off, but it turns out 梅 can be a surname.

I'm surprised you'd never seen this one before. One of my 华侨 university classmates had this surname, so it'd never struck me as rare. It's also the surname of Mei Lanfang.

[Jim]

A two character surname that's come up in my current reading and is new to me: 皇甫. Specifically a general called 皇甫規, apparently his grandfather was a famous general too, and a search reveals some later well-known statesmen.

[roddy]

Today was the first time I saw 乐 as a surname, or at least took note of it. I may well have seen it at some point and not noted it. If you're wondering if that's a Le or a Yue, it can be either. The only other 多音姓 I can think of is 翟, which can be Zhai or Di. I seem to recall it tends to be Zhai in the south and Di in the north, but not sure. 

[roddy]

Have we had 要 yet? 

[Lu]

41 minutes ago, roddy said:

Have we had 要 yet?

I would be so confused if I came across that one. In the wrong circumstances, I would never be able to figure it out.

[roddy]

The Yaos and anyone named 于 or 和 are just making things difficult, if you ask me. I'm sure there are others.

[imron]

On 7/28/2020 at 9:49 AM, roddy said:

Have we had 要 yet? 

This further adds to my believe that you should always look up pronunciation of surnames because it's likely to be different from the standard pronunciation (see 曾、单 etc).

[Dlezcano]

Recently I read a news about a woman whose surname was (unfortunately she died) 来. According to wikipedia there are about 150.000 Lai in China.

[roddy]

7 hours ago, imron said:

you should always look up pronunciation of surnames

I actually didn't with this one, I was too excited about finding a new one. Glad to see it's only a difference in tone, so I don't need to edit my translation.