An old Chinese proverb stated that "the ideal family had five generations living under one roof."  In old China, the patriarch of a family which met this Confucian ideal was eligible to receive an official letter of congratulations from the Emperor.

    There are only about 100 common surnames ("last names") for the more than 1 billion Chinese world wide.   The distribution of surnames is not equal.  Among the most common Chinese surnames:  Chen (Chan, Chin), and Li (Lee)

    In general, most Chinese having the same surname are related in some way.  There are historical exceptions.  During past times of civil unrest, persecution of entire families caused many Chinese to assume a different surname - most commonly, a "big" surname, which offered "safety in numbers."

    Chinese communities, especially in rural areas, are typically organized around relatives of the same surname, sometimes referred to as "clan villages."  A typical Chinese man spent most of his life in and around his home village.  A Chinese woman, once married, spent the rest of her life in and around her husband's village.  The networks of supportive family relationships provided by the clan village were the primary social anchors of Chinese life.  In old age, Chinese could look forward to positions of respect as village elders.

    Among the Chinese, there are no general terms for the English words brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, or cousin - there are only specific terms.  As examples, the Chinese title for "older brother" is different than that for "younger brother" (similarly for sisters); your father's father (paternal grandfather) has a different name than your mother's father (maternal grandfather); your father's brother is a different "uncle" than your mother's brother.  Relatives by marriage (in-laws, spouses of your siblings) have their own specific titles.

    Chinese names typically have three parts:  the family name, the generational (common-sibling) name, and your own unique name.  For example:

1. In the male name, Mao Tse-Tung:  Mao is the surname, Tse denotes the generation of  the this man (his brothers would share this in common), and Tung is this man's unique name.  This common-sibling name system is also shared by sisters.

 
2. Each generation has its own unique name.  There is no Chinese equivalent of a "Junior," because father and son cannot have the same name.

 
3. In China, each family has a genealogy book with an elaborate family tree that typically goes back at least several hundreds of years.  (Only male ancestors are listed, however.)

 
4. In the Chinese tradition, the names of new-born children are usually chosen by their paternal grandfather.

 
5. When the first grandchild is one month old, the paternal grandparents throw a big "first month" dinner party for the baby, and invite all the relatives.  The baby gets a haircut to symbolize the event.

    In China, an elaborate, formal kinship classification system was developed thousands of years ago because it helped to distinguish the exact specific relationships between the many close and distant relatives living in the same village.  In traditional China, it was necessary to address one's relatives by the correct title with respect to the speaker.

    Each year around the month of April, during a ceremony known as "Ching Ming," the Chinese pay homage to their ancestors through prayers and offerings of food and symbolic money at their graves and at the family shrines set up in the village.  Reciting the names of ten generations of your direct ancestors was an old historic tradition in China.

    The formal kinship chart was developed to display nearly every possible permutation of family relationships.  The written Chinese has been translated into three dialects of Chinese - Mandarin, Canton, and Toysan.  There are a number of sounds used in Chinese that have no counterpart in English.  For the Mandarin dialect, the Pinyin system was used to translate the written Chinese into phonetic English.  However, Pinyin spellings do not work for the other Chinese dialects, so I have created a special phonetic system.  Here is a partial guide to the phonetic pronunciations in the Canton and Toysan dialects:

    Syllables written in UPPER CASE are accented or stressed.  Example: DAI-gaw means "big brother" in Cantonese.

CH' is a guttural sound used in the Toysan dialect, not a hard "CH" as in "choose."
Examples:  CH'EO means "little"  (pronounced "SIU" in Cantonese)

NG' is pronounced as a single sound with a soft "G" at the end.  Example: NG'OY in Cantonese means "outsider" and is used as a modifier to describe relatives by marriage.

A  rhymes with "ah."  Example: "Da" in Mandarin means "big."

AI rhymes with "aye."   Examples: "Ai" means "big" in Toysan ("Dai" in Cantonese)

AO rhymes with "cow."  Examples: "Shao" means "little" in Mandarin.

EO rhymes with "Leo," but is pronounced as a single syllable.  Example: "Beo" means a relative on the mother's side.

EW rhymes with "few."  Example:  "Kew" in Toysan means an uncle on the mother's side.

OO rhymes with "cook."  Example: "Goong" is the popular expression in Cantonse for maternal grandfather.

UI rhymes with "Louie," but is pronounced as a single syllable.  Example: "Mui" in Cantonese means "younger sister."