How do foreigners address Chinese? Learn something about Chinese Name?
The full name of a Han Chinese is composed of two parts: the surname and the given name. Today, there are 3,050 surnames in China, among them, surnames like Zhang, Wang, Li, Zhao and Liu are most popular. The surname, comes first, is often passed down through the father. It generally composes of one word. There are also two character surnames, or compound surnames, such as Oyang, Zhuge and Sima. Different from people in western countries, Chinese women always retain their family name even after marriage. After the surname is the given name, which contains one or two words. Take Chairman Mao’s name for example, his name is “Mao Zedong”. “Mao” is his surname and “Zedong” is the given name. A full Chinese name normally has two or three characters. Names containing four characters also could be seen because of a compound surname and two syllable given name. Address a Chinese directly by his (her) given name is appeared to be offensive, unless you are bosom friends. The proper way is to add
