Title: | Chinese Name Database 1930-2008 |
Version: | 2025.8 |
Date: | 2025-08-15 |
Maintainer: | Han Wu Shuang Bao <baohws@foxmail.com> |
Description: | A database of Chinese surnames and given names (1930-2008). This database contains nationwide frequency statistics of 1,806 Chinese surnames and 2,614 Chinese characters used in given names, covering about 1.2 billion Han Chinese population (96.8 percent of the Han Chinese household-registered population born from 1930 to 2008 and still alive in 2008). This package also contains a function for computing multiple indices of Chinese surnames and given names for social science research (e.g., name uniqueness, name gender, name valence, and name warmth/competence). Details are provided at https://psychbruce.github.io/ChineseNames/. |
License: | GPL-3 |
Encoding: | UTF-8 |
LazyData: | true |
URL: | https://psychbruce.github.io/ChineseNames/ |
BugReports: | https://github.com/psychbruce/ChineseNames/issues |
Depends: | R (≥ 4.0.0) |
Imports: | bruceR, data.table |
Suggests: | babynames, car, dplyr, glue |
RoxygenNote: | 7.3.2 |
NeedsCompilation: | no |
Packaged: | 2025-08-19 15:04:03 UTC; Bruce |
Author: | Han Wu Shuang Bao |
Repository: | CRAN |
Date/Publication: | 2025-08-19 16:00:07 UTC |
ChineseNames: Chinese Name Database 1930-2008
Description
A database of Chinese surnames and given names (1930-2008). This database contains nationwide frequency statistics of 1,806 Chinese surnames and 2,614 Chinese characters used in given names, covering about 1.2 billion Han Chinese population (96.8 percent of the Han Chinese household-registered population born from 1930 to 2008 and still alive in 2008). This package also contains a function for computing multiple indices of Chinese surnames and given names for social science research (e.g., name uniqueness, name gender, name valence, and name warmth/competence). Details are provided at https://psychbruce.github.io/ChineseNames/.
Author(s)
Maintainer: Han Wu Shuang Bao baohws@foxmail.com (ORCID)
Source
This database was provided by Beijing Meiming Science and Technology Company (through private collaboration) and originally obtained from the National Citizen Identity Information Center (NCIIC) of China in 2008.
See Also
Useful links:
Report bugs at https://github.com/psychbruce/ChineseNames/issues
Compute multiple indices of surnames and given names.
Description
Compute all available name features (indices) based on
familyname
and givenname
.
You can either input a data frame
with a variable of Chinese full names
(and a variable of birth years, if necessary)
or just input a vector of full names
(and a vector of birth years, if necessary).
Usage 1: Input a single value or a vector of
name
(andbirth
, if necessary).Usage 2: Input a data frame of
data
and the variable name ofvar.fullname
(orvar.surname
and/orvar.givenname
) (andvar.birthyear
, if necessary).
Caution: Name-character uniqueness (NU) for birth year >= 2010 is estimated by forecasting and thereby may not be accurate.
Usage
compute_name_index(
data = NULL,
var.fullname = NULL,
var.surname = NULL,
var.givenname = NULL,
var.birthyear = NULL,
name = NA,
birth = NA,
index = c("NLen", "SNU", "SNI", "NU", "CCU", "NG", "NV", "NW", "NC"),
NU.approx = TRUE,
digits = 4,
return.namechar = TRUE,
return.all = FALSE
)
Arguments
data |
Data frame. |
var.fullname |
Variable name of Chinese full names (e.g., |
var.surname |
Variable name of Chinese surnames (e.g., |
var.givenname |
Variable name of Chinese given names (e.g., |
var.birthyear |
Variable name of birth year (e.g., |
name |
If no |
birth |
If no |
index |
Which indices to compute? By default, it computes all available name indices:
|
NU.approx |
Whether to approximately compute name-character uniqueness (NU)
using the nearest two birth cohorts with relative weights
(which would be more precise than just using a single birth cohort).
Defaults to |
digits |
Number of decimal places. Defaults to |
return.namechar |
Whether to return separate name characters.
Defaults to |
return.all |
Whether to return all temporary variables
in the computation of the final variables.
Defaults to |
Details
https://psychbruce.github.io/ChineseNames/
Value
A new data frame (class data.table
) with name indices appended.
Full names are split into name0
(surnames, with compound surnames automatically detected),
name1
, name2
, and name3
(given-name characters).
Examples
## Prepare ##
sn = familyname$surname[1:12]
gn = c(top100name.year$name.all.1960[1:6],
top100name.year$name.all.2000[1:6],
top100name.year$name.all.1960[95:100],
top100name.year$name.all.2000[95:100])
demodata = data.frame(name=paste0(sn, gn),
birth=c(1960:1965, 2000:2005,
1960:1965, 2000:2005))
demodata
## Compute ##
newdata = compute_name_index(demodata,
var.fullname="name",
var.birthyear="birth")
newdata
1,806 Chinese surnames and nationwide frequency.
Description
1,806 Chinese surnames and nationwide frequency.
Usage
data(familyname)
Format
A data frame with 7 variables:
surname
surname (in Chinese)
compound
0 = single surname, 1 = compound surname
initial
initial letter (a-z)
initial.rank
initial order (1-26)
n.1930_2008
total counts in the database
ppm.1930_2008
proportion in population (ppm = parts per million)
surname.uniqueness
surname uniqueness
Details
https://psychbruce.github.io/ChineseNames/
2,614 Chinese characters used in given names and nationwide frequency.
Description
2,614 Chinese characters used in given names and nationwide frequency.
Usage
data(givenname)
Format
A data frame with 25 variables:
character
character used in given names (in Chinese)
pinyin
pinyin (pronunciation)
bihua
number of strokes in a character
n.male
total counts in male
n.female
total counts in female
name.gender
difference in proportions of a character used by male vs. female
n.1930_1959
,n.1960_1969
,n.1970_1979
,n.1980_1989
,n.1990_1999
,n.2000_2008
total counts in a birth cohort
ppm.1930_1959
,ppm.1960_1969
,ppm.1970_1979
,ppm.1980_1989
,ppm.1990_1999
,ppm.2000_2008
proportion (parts per million) in a birth cohort
name.ppm
average ppm (parts per million) across all cohorts
name.uniqueness
name-character uniqueness (in naming practices)
corpus.ppm
proportion (parts per million) in contemporary Chinese corpus
corpus.uniqueness
character-corpus uniqueness (in contemporary Chinese corpus)
name.valence
name valence (positivity of character meaning) (based on subjective ratings from 16 raters, ICC = 0.921)
name.warmth
name warmth/morality (based on subjective ratings from 10 raters, ICC = 0.774)
name.competence
name competence/assertiveness (based on subjective ratings from 10 raters, ICC = 0.712)
Details
https://psychbruce.github.io/ChineseNames/
Population statistics for the Chinese name database.
Description
Population statistics for the Chinese name database.
Usage
data(population)
Details
https://psychbruce.github.io/ChineseNames/
Top 1,000 given names in 31 Chinese mainland provinces.
Description
Top 1,000 given names in 31 Chinese mainland provinces.
Usage
data(top1000name.prov)
Details
https://psychbruce.github.io/ChineseNames/
Top 100 given names in 6 birth cohorts.
Description
Top 100 given names in 6 birth cohorts.
Usage
data(top100name.year)
Details
https://psychbruce.github.io/ChineseNames/
Top 50 given-name characters in 6 birth cohorts.
Description
Top 50 given-name characters in 6 birth cohorts.
Usage
data(top50char.year)