http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070612/lf_afp/lifestylechinasocietynameoffbeat_070612065246
Quote: "In a country of around 1.3 billion people, about 85 percent share only 100 surnames ... The survey found 92 million people shared the surname Li, while 88 million were called Zhang. A further seven surnames -- including Chen, Zhou and Lin -- are held by at least 20 million Chinese."
Wow.. therein lies naming opportunity to create new names .. or sub-domains like jerry.yang.com from the domains Yang.com, Li.com or Zhang .com .. Those three .com names could be more valuable than the entire .name registry. Crazy.
I think you are significantly overestimating the value of the .Name registry.
***FS*** If so, that's very sad.. so much effort and acrimony to create a namespace with so litle enterprise value.
Posted by: anonymous | June 12, 2007 at 12:53 PM
FYI, the same Chinese surnames could be spelled differently based on different regions and different spoken dialects. For example, "Zhang" is the common spelling in mainland China but it's spelled "Chang" in Taiwan and "Cheung" in Hong Kong.
Posted by: Franky Tong | June 12, 2007 at 01:00 PM
Well frank if you are interested in Chinese Surnames in dot com, I can probably drag up a few top 100 surnames. I filled in the gaps, so I guess you won't find any free to register. Don't know for sure about dot CN. There is an online list for the top 200 in Chinese somewhere.
Posted by: Dave Wrixon | June 12, 2007 at 02:24 PM
Just a bit of clarification here. The full pinyin for Surnames is more like Zhang2 or Zhang4. The numbers after are essential for pronunciation. I doubt whether Chinese will really identify strongly with anything other than the actual Chinese characters. Nearly all Chinese surnames are single character. These are very special.
Posted by: Dave Wrixon | June 12, 2007 at 02:29 PM
Zhang/Cheung could also be Jang, Jeung, or a number of other latin spellings to overseas Chinese, but it's spelled only two ways in Chinese.
Zhang would be 张 in China (Simplified Chinese)
Cheung/Jeung/Chang would be 張 in Hong Kong, Taiwan (Traditional Chinese)
Posted by: GoldenBear | June 12, 2007 at 02:33 PM
Update:
Chinese officials are considering measures to expand the number of surnames in the country in order to prevent confusion, state media says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6745259.stm
I guess that is not good news for me!
Posted by: Dave Wrixon | June 12, 2007 at 03:32 PM
any IDN category you DON'T have dave? Nobody asked you to brag your portfolio listing ;-).
Posted by: Ha | June 12, 2007 at 05:34 PM
...than again...almost ANYTHING'S more valuable than the entire .name registry... :-)
Posted by: Steve Morsa | June 12, 2007 at 06:32 PM
Chinese top surnames are so common, it like a complement to the name itself. The reason why in Taiwan and China, people like to call by full name (surname+name).
Posted by: touchring | June 12, 2007 at 10:34 PM