I just searched the World Wide Web for the most common Chinese family names. I quickly found a page with a list of a hundred most popular names written in Chinese characters with innumerable renderings in Latin characters. What interested me most were the meanings of names, and the list provided it. Only about a third of them have a meaning, but the list is amazing all by itself: king, plum, bowyer, royalty, exhibit, poplar, yellow, gradual, grandson, horse, crimson, mustache or beard, city wall, tall, forest, gatherer, beam, thankful, field or farmland, direct or supervise, long robe, extra or surplus, birch leaf or pear, leaf or page, rule or order, high mountain, land or six, gold, stone, merchant, white, bear, thunder, and fur or hair. Again, the first family name in this list is the most common while the last is the least common among the hundred most common names in China today. Now, if you wish to get to know this country and its people, start by studying the above short list. And try to make sense of it, for it goes quite a way back—say, five millennia. Good luck!