The most common surname in Macao at the end of last year was Chan (陳), with 73,152 people or 8.73 percent of the population possessing the surname, according to new data from the Statistics and Census Service (also known by its Portuguese initials DSEC).
In second place was Wong (黃), which was the last name of a total of 58,693 people or 7.01 percent of the population. This was followed by Lei (李) – the family name of 54,858 people, accounting for 6.55 percent of the population.
DSEC data also showed that the most common given name in the city was Chi Keong (志強), a masculine name that had a frequency of 1,468. The feminine names Ka Man (嘉敏) and Ka Ian (嘉欣) were ranked second and third place respectively, with a total of 1,187 and 1,106 individuals possessing these names.
Meanwhile, the Chinese characters that appeared most often in a name included Ka (嘉), which featured in 22,049 names, Man (文), which appeared in 21,871 names, and Wa (華), which was used a total of 21,538 times.
Newborns in 2023 saw the characters Chi (梓), Ut (玥) and 子 (Chi) appear most frequently in their names. In contrast, DSEC noted that the characters Ka (嘉), Man (文) and 穎 (Weng) appeared most commonly in the names of newborns in 1999.
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With respect to the different generations, the most common given names for those born between 2010 and 2019 were the feminine name Chi Cheng (芷晴) and the masculine name Chi Hin (梓軒), which had a frequency of 340 and 240 respectively.
In contrast, the feminine names Ka Ian (嘉欣) and Ka Man (嘉敏) were the most popular among people born in the noughties, with a total of 269 and 237 respectively.
People born in the nineties saw similar results as their noughties counterparts, with 387 having the name Ka Man (嘉敏) and 323 people using the name Ka Ian (嘉欣).
The findings were based on fourth-quarter 2023 data, which indicated that Macao had a total population of 683,700 people.
According to an official report in 2020, the most common surnames across mainland China were Wang (王), Li (李) and Zhang (张).
