Exactly because there're too many too common and easy. Read my threadstarting post, it defeats the purpose of identifying families. Let's say, in a classroom of ten Tans, eight Lims and six Lees, surnames become meaningless as identitfiers anymore. Even the teachers, I couldn't remember how many Mr. or Mrs. Tan, Lim or Lee I've had. Perhaps I view this from a different wavelength. Surnames are to identitfy families and given names are to identify members in the respective families. Many unrelated Eurasian and western families share similar surnames too, but not to the extent of hundreds of thousands and millions in case of Chinese that four presidential candidates are all of the same surname. I'm not complaining, it's not my problem. I'm just opening this topic for discussion and hopefully, enlightment. Thanks. All opinions welcome, just refrain from profanities please, I'm not anti-Chinese.