If all the Wangs in China seceded — all 93 million — they would become the world’s 12th-most-populous nation. The 88 million Zhangs could eat every crumb of the UN’s World Food Programme, distributed annually to people in 82 countries.

And the entire population of Surrey could be replaced with Chinese men called Li Gang.

With more than a billion people sharing little more than 100 surnames, Chinese authorities have a problem differentiating, for instance, between the 1.3 million people called Liu Bo.

Such is the level of confusion that the Ministry of Public Security wants to change the law to allow parents to create double-barrelled surnames for their children. Currently the law states that children are allowed to take the surname of only their mother or father.

A recent survey showed that apart from the most popular names — Wang, Li (92 million) and Zhang — seven other surnames, including Chen, Zhou and Lin, are held by at least 20 million Chinese. A registration official said: “Such names cause great trouble in daily life, and the new regulation can vastly reduce name repetition.”

Under a new draft regulation from the ministry, parents will be able to combine their surnames, opening up 1.28 million new possibilities. A father named Zhou and a mother called Zhu could call their child either Zhouzhu or Zhuzhou.

One of the most popular names for boys is only two Chinese characters, Zhang Wei. There is a joke in China that if you call out that name in the street, several people will turn around. One young man said that he changed his given name from Wei, or Great, while in school to Jun to avoid confusion when the teacher called on children to answer questions.

One per cent of the population, or 1.3 million people, share the name Liu Bo — meaning Liu Waves. The vogue in recent years for two names rather than the more common practice of three characters for a name has fuelled the confusion.

Du Peng, professor with the Population and Development Research Centre at the People’s University, told The Times: “This reflects a desire for a more quiet and simple life after the Cultural Revolution.” The result has been more than a million men with the name Li Gang, or Strong, and 765,000 called Wang Yong — Brave.

Names could be equally confusing after the 1949 Communist takeover when people named millions of babies “Liberation”, or “Nation Founding” or “Resisting America”.

In the ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution, the fashion was for such names as “Safeguard Red”, “Leap Forward” or even “Cultural Revolution”. Wang Haohua, secretary-general of the China Name Culture Research Centre, said that the duplication of names also led to confusion in police work.

Beijing police once entered an alley to arrest a Zhang Jun — or Zhang Army. They did not know that two men of that name lived there and arrested the bridegroom Zhang Jun on his wedding day while the suspect escaped. Mr Wang said: “They took him away and ruined his wedding.”

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