TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s most popular given names in 2023 are once again Chia-hao (家豪) for men and Shu-fen (淑芬) for women, while Chen (陳) remained the most common surname.
Taiwan’s interior ministry released the statistics on Monday (Oct. 30), and showed that there were just over 14,000 Chia-haos in Taiwan, and around 32,000 Shu-fens. The two given names have been the most popular since 2012 and 2010 respectively.
According to the education ministry’s dictionary, the Chinese character “chia (家)” has many meanings, and most commonly refers to the family or home. It can also be used as an honorific for individuals with specialized talents, and describe schools of thought.
Hao (豪) also has many meanings, including a person with outstanding talent, a hero, someone of great fortune, the bold, and the direct. For females, shu (淑) refers to kindness, beauty and virtuousness, while fen (芬) means an aroma or fragrance.
The following most common names for men were Chih-ming (志明) and Chien-hung (建宏) with about 13,000 and 12,000 each. For women the following most common names were Shu-hui (淑惠) with about 30,000 and Mei-ling (美玲) with about 27,000.
En-shuo (恩碩) for males and Pin-yen (品妍) for females are emerging as contenders for future most popular names. Other names growing in popularity are the male Cheng-en (承恩), You-ting (宥廷), and Pin-jui (品睿), and the female Tsu-ching (子晴) and Yung-Ching (詠晴).
Taiwan’s over 23 million people had 1,785 different surnames, with 1,667 of them being single-character names, and 118 being two-character names. There were also just over 8,000 people with names transliterated into Chinese characters, including foreign residents and Indigenous Taiwanese.
The number of Indigenous Taiwanese people reverting to their Indigenous language names was down slightly from last year, at 167. Just under 1,800 people have reverted to their Indigenous names since 2013.
Taiwan allowed children to be given their mother’s surnames at birth in 1996, and the ministry said the number of newborns being named this way is increasing. The ministry said that between 2012 and 2022, the percentage of kids with their mother’s surnames have increased from under 4% to around 5.5%.
There were also 268 people who have a surname no one else has in Taiwan. These surnames included Chinese characters that mean different numbers, onomatopoeic sounds, and words like “lion,” “chess,” and “money.”