A 1987 study showed over 450 family names in common use in Beijing, but there were fewer than 300 family names in Fujian.
A study by geneticist Yuan Yida has found that of all the people with a particular surname, there tends to be a population concentration in a certain province, as tabled to the right.
It does not show, however, the most common surnames in any one province.
The 55th most common family name "Xiao" (肖) appears to be very rare in Hong Kong.
This is explained by the fact Hong Kong uses traditional Chinese characters not simplified Chinese characters.
Originally, the surname 蕭 (Xiao) was rather common while the surname 肖 (Xiao) was extremely rare, if not non-existent (it is mentioned only sporadically in historical texts).
The first round of simplification in 1956 simplified 蕭 into 萧, keeping 蕭/萧 and 肖 distinct. However the second-round in 1977, which has long been abolished, merged 萧 and 肖 into 肖.
Despite the retraction of the second round, some people have kept 肖 as their surname, so that there are now two separate surnames, 萧 and 肖.
Chén (trad 陳, simp 陈) is perhaps the most common surname in Hong Kong and Macau (romanized as Chan) and is also common in Taiwan (romanized as Chen).
Fang (方), which is only the 47th most common overall, is much more common in San Francisco's Chinatown in the United States (more often romanized as Fong based on the Cantonese dialect).
As with the concentration of family names, this can also be explained statistically, as a person with an uncommon name moving to an unsettled area and leaving his family name to large number of people.
After the Song Dynasty, surname distributions in China largely settled down.
The Kwong family for example, migrated from the capital in the north and settled in Guangdong after the revolts of the Song Dynasty.
Villages were often made up of a single patrilineage, being individuals with the same surname, often with a common male ancestor.
They usually intermarried with others from nearby villages, creating genetic clusters.
Source : Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
