The latest statistics released by the Ministry of Interior on people’s surnames highlight a great variety of unusual and sometimes fascinating family names.
As of July 2 this year, Taiwan had a total of 1,517 family names. Of these, 1,398 are single-character surnames, accounting for 23.22 million people, while 119 double-character surnames account for 30,428 individuals.
There are also a few thousand people with special surnames that utilize characters not usually used in Taiwan for surnames, the data showed.
Among these rare surnames are Tung (東, east), Hsi (西, west), Nan (南, south) and Pei (北, north), used by 893, 450, 45 and eight people respectively.
There are also people whose surnames are the words for seasons, namely Chun (春, spring), Hsia (夏, summer), Chiu (秋, autumn) and Tung (冬, winter). There are 37 Chuns, 16,839 Hsias, 197 Chius and 78 Tungs, the data show.
Other rare surnames are Chia (甲), Yi (乙), Ping (丙) and Ting (丁), which are the first four sets of “Heavenly Stems” (天干) used in Taoist divination and familiar to Taiwanese students as a grading system used in schools equivalent to ABC and D. These four rare family names account for 28, 27, 1 and 48,234 individuals respectively, according to the ministry.
There are also people whose surnames are calendar notations such as Nien (年, year), Yueh (月, month) and Jih (日, day), accounting for 79, 390 and 231 people respectively.
Two surnames whose meanings are amounts, To (多, many) and Shao (少, few) account for 63 and 5 people; six people are called Chen (真, true) and seven Chia (假, false); Shih (是, yes) and Fei (非, no) account for 27 and two people; 140 people are named Kung (公, male) while 86 are called Mu (母, female), while there are two people called Suan (酸, sour) and two called Ku (苦, bitter), the ministry said.
Across the nation, there are 981 people whose surnames are composed of more than six characters, with one having the nation’s longest name, which contains 13 characters.
Deputy Minister of the Interior Chien Tai-lang (簡太郎) said these unusually long names originate mostly in Aboriginal communities or are of Tibetan or Mongolian origin, or are those of naturalized citizens of foreign origin.
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS