Wang,Li and Zhang are the three most common surnames in China.

If you've ever worried about running into someone with the same name as you, then spare a thought for the Wangs, Lis and Zhangs of this world, whose names have just been declared the three most common in the country.

The results of a nationwide survey, released yesterday by the Ministry of Public Security, show that there are some 92.8 million Wangs in China, about 7.25 percent of the population, making it the nation's most common last names.

Li came in second with 92.07 million (7.19 percent) and Zhang third with 87.5 million (6.83 percent).

Aside from the top three, the survey found that a further seven names are used by more than 20 million people: Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Wu and Zhou.

Twelve more belongs to between 10 million and 20 million people: Xu, Sun, Ma, Zhu, Hu, Guo, He, Gao, Lin, Luo, Zheng, Liang.

The most common 100 names account for 84.77 percent of the population, which is about 1.3 billion.

The ranking was conducted according to the national household registration system, which includes ethnic minorities, but excludes Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Du Ruofu, a retired researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said: "As the first national survey of surnames, the results are precious."

Du published a book on Chinese surnames, the genetic differences between people from North and South China and Chinese linguistics in 1992.

"The new survey is more accurate because of its larger scale," Du said, comparing it to his own research conducted in 1987, which was based on a sample of about 500,000 people.

In Du's research, Li, Wang and Zhang again held the top three spots, accounting for 7.9 percent, 7.4 percent and 7.1 percent of the population, respectively.