Absolutely yes! My surname and given name are really rare both as separate characters and a combination, nevertheless i found dozens of duplication in Google. There is one public servant, one teacher, one archeologist and…me.

Very few people have a one-and-only name. According to a highly authoritative research (carried out by me), only four of the people I know does. By that I mean there are only one or two pages of google results of their names and they are all about themselves. But they are not happy about that, feeling insecure and such.

If i were to name my kid, i would prefer a longer one like four characters, since seldom Chinese do that. That would be easier than picking a rare and most of the time weird character.

My last message was a bit confusing. Wish there was an edit function like there is on the forum.

Do you often encounter people who have the same given and surnames as other people? It would seem that if there is a limited number of surnames and many of them are high frequency (张，马， 王， 黄）, that you’d run into duplication of names，especially if there is a two character limit.

Given that, I could see picking a really rare character to make the complete name more unique.

Last week, I was pinged on FaceBook by someone who thought I worked in the Air Force in the 1990s in Texas so it even happens to me on occasion,
and my surname in English isn’t that common.

一不小心漏掉了你的留言。多谢

@LanZi

I find two-character-names only popular in younger generations. For my parents and their peers all have three character names. Since there are only two characters, people have to find really complicated or rare character for their kids. I learnt new characters in many of my friends’ names.

What is the complete name you are referring to?

Yes, I noticed. I same with Chinese names from America….I’m a three character name. Is it very common to find people with the name
complete name? We run into it occasionally here in the States.

Thanks. Have you noticed names in mainland China and Taiwan or Hong Kong are different in terms of the number of characters. Mainland China tends to name in two characters like Zhou Li, Lan Wei, Yao Wei. While outside mainland they are using three characters most of the time, like Lin Chi-ling, Hou Pei-cen.

台北果然很多小吃！酱牛肉春饼我没吃过，有空找来吃吃。不行，你的avatar太诱人，一看就流口水。

Landis! 蓝大卫，很合适，nice name！可惜我的名字找不到这么搭的女生的英文名

对， 以前我说了，但是我告诉你，我的姓氏是Landis.
Echo 告诉了我她喜欢我的中文名字。

老实说，我也看不懂 对，中国姓氏都是很有历史的。是啊我贴了照片，很高兴认识你，dim sum… 你的照片呢？你的英语姓氏是什么？可以说吗？

我用“蓝” 因为听起来我的英语姓氏.

Definitely!

The surname 蓝 is from 秦子, named after the place 蓝田, according to this:

http://www.qingyunju.com/name/qiyuan/nian.htm

Hmmm….. do you think we might be related???

Wow I didn’t know that page. Seems everyone has an impressive resume. Afraid I need some time to get on that. By that time I would quote “i love animal. They are tasty”

Yes! We share the same surname 蓝. What’s more exciting, we share the same first name “wei”. Mine is 蔚 as in 蔚蓝（wei4lan2,blue）. So practically my name is blue blue…

Thank you for your help!

http://www.chineseclass101.com/about-us/member-introduction/

What sort of “Lan” are you? Do we share the same surname???

谢谢你帮我！