List of most common surnames in Asia

Cambodian names are borrowed from Chinese, Sanskrit, and Vietnamese words.

According to a report released by the Chinese Ministry for Public Security in January 2019, there are 6,150 different surnames in China with the top 100 surnames used by 85% of the population in 2018.[2]

Most Indonesians do not use a family last name. There is only a small number of ethnic groups which maintain family names.

The most common Japanese surnames are Satō (佐藤), Suzuki (鈴木), Takahashi (高橋), Tanaka (田中) and Watanabe (渡辺).

Surnames in Nepal are divided into three origins; Indo-Aryan languages, Tibeto-Burman languages and indigenous origins. Indo-Aryan surnames dominates over other language origin surnames.

The Catálogo alfabético de apellidos (English: Alphabetical Catalogue of Surnames; Tagalog: Alpabetikong Katalogo ng mga apelyedo) is a book of surnames in the Philippines and other islands of Spanish East Indies published in the mid-19th century. This was in response to a Spanish colonial decree establishing the distribution of Spanish family names and local surnames among colonial subjects who did not have a prior surname. It is also the reason why Filipinos share the same surnames of Spanish people.[3]

The book was created after Spanish Governor-General Narciso Clavería y Zaldúa issued a decree on November 21, 1849, to address the lack of a standard naming convention.[4] Newly-Christianised Filipinos often chose the now-ubiquitous surnames of de los Santos, de la Cruz, del Rosario, and Bautista for religious reasons; others preferred names of well-known local rulers such as Lacandola. To complicate matters further, discrepancies like family members holding different surnames would hinder some of the colonial government's activities such as taking a census and tax collection.

1. Santos
2. Reyes
3. Cruz
4. Bautista
5. Del Rosario
6. Gonzales
7. Ramos
8. Aquino
9. Garcia
10. Dela Cruz
11. Lopez
12. Fernandez
13. Mendoza
14. Morales
15. Marquez
16. Hernandez
17. Navarro
18. Sanchez
19. Delos Reyes
20. Delos Santos

Many low country Sinhalese have Portuguese surnames as a result of Portuguese colonial rule in that areas during the 16th and 17th centuries. Of Sinhalese own surnames, they have Sanskrit origination. Tamils and Sri Lankan Moors have distinctive surnames for their own ethnicity.

A lot of Sinhalese surnames end with Singhe (Sinhalese: සිංහයා meaning lion). Such as Jayasinghe, Ranasinghe, Samarasinghe etc.

According to a comprehensive survey of residential permits released by the Taiwanese Ministry of the Interior's Department of Population in 2016, Taiwan has only 1,503 surnames.[8] The top ten surnames in Taiwan accounted for 52.77% of the general population, and the top 100 accounted for 96.56%.

There are no common Thai surnames. Surnames were largely introduced to Thai culture only by the 1913 Surname Act.[9] The law does not allow one to create any surname that is duplicated with any existing surnames.[10] Under Thai law, only one family can create any given surname: any two people of the same surname must be related, and it is very rare for two people to share the same full name. In one sample of 45,665 names, 81% of family names were unique.[11]

• Lists of East Asian surnames
• Lists of most common surnames, for other continents