“Ma,” a Chinese character for horse, is the 13th most common family name in China, shared by nearly 17 million people. That can cause no end of confusion when Mas get together, especially if those Mas also share the same given name, as many Chinese do.
Ma Cheng’s book-loving grandfather came up with an elegant solution to this common problem. Twenty-six years ago, when his granddaughter was born, he combed through his library of Chinese dictionaries and lighted upon a character pronounced “cheng.” Cheng, which means galloping steeds, looks just like the character for horse, except that it is condensed and written three times in a row.
The character is so rare that once people see it, Miss Ma said, they tend to remember both her and her name. That is one reason she likes it so much.
That is also why the government wants her to change it.
For Ma Cheng and millions of others, Chinese parents’ desire to give their children a spark of individuality is colliding head-on with the Chinese bureaucracy’s desire for order. Seeking to modernize its vast database on China’s 1.3 billion citizens, the government’s Public Security Bureau has been replacing the handwritten identity card that every Chinese must carry with a computer-readable one, complete with color photos and embedded microchips. The new cards are harder to forge and can be scanned at places like airports where security is a priority.
The bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report. The result is that Miss Ma and at least some of the 60 million other Chinese with obscure characters in their names cannot get new cards — unless they change their names to something more common.
I suppose this is why advocates for smaller government in the U.S. gain so much traction by invoking the bureaucratic bogeyman. Can you imagine the U.S. trying to tell people what to name their children? Oh, this post is not supposed to be about America. O.K. … back the nytimes “Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says.”
Moreover, the situation is about to get worse or, in the government’s view, better. Since at least 2003, China has been working on a standardized list of characters for people to use in everyday life, including when naming children.
One newspaper reported last week that the list would be issued later this year and would curb the use of obscure names. A government linguistics official told Xinhua, the state-run news agency, that the list would include more than 8,000 characters. Although that is far fewer than the database now supposedly includes, the official said it was more than enough “to convey any concept in any field.” About 3,500 characters are in everyday use.
Government officials suggest that names have gotten out of hand, with too many parents picking the most obscure characters they can find or even making up characters, like linguistic fashion accessories. But many Chinese couples take pride in searching the rich archives of classical Chinese to find a distinctive, pleasing name, partly to help their children stand out in a society with strikingly few surnames.
This is essentially the exact opposite of the English language. The OED has 600,000 definitions. Let’s just say there are millions, when we throw in technical terms, neologisms, terms adapted from immigrant communities, and slang.
By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China’s citizens. Laobaixing, or “old hundred names,” is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans.
The number of Chinese family names in use has tended to shrink as China’s population has grown, a winnowing of surnames that has occurred in many cultures over time.
At last count, China’s Wangs were leading with more than 92 million, followed by 91 million Lis and 86 million Zhangs. To refer to an unidentified person — the equivalent of “just anybody” in English — one Chinese saying can be loosely translated this way: “some Zhang, some Li.”
And here’s my favorite part of the story:
Wang Daliang, a linguistics scholar with the China Youth University for Political Science, said picking rare characters for given names only compounded the problem and inconvenienced everyone. “Using obscure names to avoid duplication of names or to be unique is not good,” he wrote in an e-mail response to questions.
Way to confront the goverment line, Mr. Wang. This affects you too! What’s Daliang supposed to be mean, anyway? Probably not as cool as “galloping steeds.”
Oh, and Jackie Chan agrees with the government … about everything.
While addressing a group of Chinese businessmen, Jackie Chan spoke out against freedoms for the Chinese people, saying that if they weren’t controlled they would “just do what [they] want.”
The horror! The Onion’s fake vox pops puts it all into perspective for us, thankfully:
They should at least be tougher about the lax placement of pulleys, buckets, ladders, and hovercraft that have given this man no end of trouble.
Indeed.
But you know, for some reason, I doubt “Jackie” will be included in the government database.
Matt Bai has a 
Commanders of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, as the American-led coalition is formally called, have a looming nomenclature problem.