[jimmydef]

"Over 723,000 people, or one in eight Singaporeans, has this name from the Tan state of the Zhou dynasty."

Yeah, this is complete nonsense. The "Tan" surname is basically the hokkien/min-nan pronunciation of the chinese character 陈, which is basically pronounced Chen in mandarin and Chan in cantonese.

It has nothing to do with the surname 譚 which is pronounced Tan in mandarin.

Due to the presence of many chinese language groups in singapore (unlike hk which is predominantly cantonese or mainland china and taiwan which uses mandarin), transliterations of surnames can be tricky. The same surname 王 can be written in many ways in singapore (Ong, Heng, Wang, Wong, etc.)