[headsupftw]

"I thought the given name in Chinese was almost always two characters. Is this not the case?"

Not at all. Nowadays there are hundreds of millions of people in Mainland China with a single-character given name. Case in point: former tennis player Li Na, former basketball player Yao Ming.

I say "Mainland China" because I notice people from Hongkong and Taiwan have mostly two-character given names.