Americans surnames are the surnames which are held by the slightly more than 330 million people who live within the United States, along with associated groups such as people born in America who have moved abroad. Unlike most other countries worldwide, where surname practices belong to a specific ethnic or racial tradition and are often tied to one specific language, the surname landscape of the United States reflects its history, being highly varied and cosmopolitan. There are influences of English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, French, Dutch, Hispanic, German, Polish, Jewish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and many other national surnames across the country. That said, some surnames are much more common than others, with English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Hispanic surnames making up over 90 of the 100 most common surnames in the United States.[1]
History of American surnames
The concept of surnames did not exist in North America for the most part prior to the arrival of European colonists in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Native Americans had no such distinction. Consequently, surnames were a colonial import to what would become the United States by the English in the seventeenth century. Native American groups only began to use surnames from the late nineteenth century onwards, making census records particularly difficult to use to trace native ancestors prior to 1900.[2]
There is no indigenous or native surname tradition in America. All of it has been imported along colonial and migratory lines. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries American surnames were fairly uniform in that they were English in the main, with a substantial minority of Welsh, Scottish and Irish surnames, reflecting the early colonization of the Thirteen Colonies. There were also small pockets of surnames in places like New York that were of Dutch extraction, reflecting the colonization of that city originally by the Dutch between the 1630s and 1660s. German and Swiss surnames began to appear in Pennsylvania as well from the 1680s as communities of Central European religious radicals migrated here.
This tendency for the surname landscape of the United States to reflect its colonial history has continued ever since. For instance, in the nineteenth century the number of Irish and Italian surnames within the broad tapestry of ‘American surnames’ expanded dramatically as millions of Irish and Italians migrated to North America from Europe. They were soon joined by waves of Germans, Poles and other peoples. In the twentieth century this all shifted towards Hispanic surnames increases, while surnames of Arabic, Asian and African origin have become more common in America in recent decades.
One final notable element of American surnames is that the prevalence of English or British surnames is artificially inflated by the fact that most members of the African American community today have Anglophone surnames of one kind or another, This was because slaves in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would often be given the surname of their owner, or they would adopt the surname of a white benefactor if manumitted and released from slavery. Hence, we do not see an element within the American surname landscape which sufficiently acknowledges the huge proportion of the American population whose ethnic roots lie in western Africa.[3]
Geographical spread of American surnames
Inevitably the geographical spread of surnames in the United States has followed various diasporas and where different ethnic groups have settled at different times over the last four centuries. In parts of the country which have been settled by people of European extraction for centuries, English surnames tend to be the most common. Smith is the most common surname in New York City, for instance, as it is in the country as a whole.
However, we can see how the specific settlement history of a particular region can impact on its surname landscape by looking at somewhere like Miami, Florida. Owing to the enormous influx of Cubans into the city and surrounding parts of southern and eastern Florida, the most common surnames in Miami are Hispanic surnames like Rodriguez, Garcia and Gonzalez.[4]
Similar patterns can be seen across the country. The Great Plains were heavily settled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by people from Scandinavia and other parts of Central and Northern Europe.[5] As a result, the most common surnames in a state like North Dakota today are Norse surnames like Anderson, Olson, Nelson, Larson and Peterson.[6]
Along the southern border in states like Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, nearly a century of migration from Mexico and other parts of Latin America into the Sunbelt states has led to a growing dominance of Hispanic surnames here. Along with the ubiquitous Smith, Martinez and Garcia are two of the three most common surnames in Texas. In many ways, the surname landscape of the United States tells the country’s history.[6]
Most common American surnames
Despite the cosmopolitan nature of American society, the most commonly found surnames in the country are still Anglo-Norman, English or British surnames, reflecting the early colonial history of North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the vast majority of settlers in the Thirteen Colonies which later formed the United States were English, Welsh and Irish. The top 10 most common surnames are as follows:
- Smith – An occupational surname indicating an ancestor was a blacksmith.
- Johnson – A patronymic surname meaning ‘son of John’.
- Williams – A patronymic surname meaning ‘son of William’.
- Brown – A descriptor surname which infers that an ancestor had brown hair or some swarthy features.
- Jones – More of a Welsh surname than an English one, this means ‘son of John’ as well.
- García – A surname of Spanish origin meaning ‘son of Garcia’.
- Miller – An occupation surname indicating an ancestor was a miller or owned a mill.
- Davis – A more typically Welsh surname again, meaning ‘son of David’.
- Rodríguez – More Portuguese than Spanish, meaning ‘son of Rodrigo’.
- Martínez – Another Hispanic surname meaning ‘son of Martino’ or ‘Martin’.
Collectively these 10 most common surnames account for the surnames of roughly 15 million Americans.
Clearly this list indicates the growing swell of Latin American migration to the United States in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with Hispanics now accounting for nearly 20% of the population.[7]
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Beyond these Anglophone and Hispanic surnames, the most common surnames belonging to other ethnic groups within the US are the following:
- Lee – Around 700,000 Americans have this surname, attesting to the strength of the Korean American community, although statistically some of these may be the English surname Lee.
- Nguyen – One of the 40 most common surnames in the United States. This highlights the size of the Vietnamese American community in recent decades.
- Kelly – An unequivocally Irish name and just one of several which point to the strength of the Irish diaspora in America.
- Patel – The most common Indian surname in the United States, with approximately quarter of a million Americans holding this surname.[8]
Famous people with American surnames
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These are examples of famous Americans with the five most common surnames in the country:
- Will Smith – An Oscar-winning actor and musician, Smith has the most common surname in the entirety of the United States.
- Lyndon B. Johnson – There has never been a US President with the country’s most common surname Smith (Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic candidate was the closest Smith to get to the White House), but Lyndon Johnson, President from 1963 to 1969, ensured there has been a president with the second most common American surname.
- Serena Williams – Arguably the greatest female tennis player of all time, with 23 Grand Slam titles. She and her sister Venus have the third most common American surname.
- James Brown – ‘The Godfather of Soul’ has the fourth most common American surname.
- Tommy Lee Jones – A film actor known for playing gruff and tough cops, Jones has the fifth most common surname in America.
See also
- United States
- British surnames
- Irish surnames
- Scottish surnames
- Welsh surnames
- African American surnames
- Canadian surnames
- Hispanic surnames
- Native American surnames
- Slavic surnames
- French surnames
- Finnish surnames
- Swedish surnames
- Basque surnames
- Dutch surnames
- Choctaw surnames
- Cherokee surnames
- Navajo surnames
- Silesian surnames
- Rusyn surnames
- Russian surnames
- Armenian surnames
- Bukharan Jewish surnames
Explore more about American surnames
- US Public Records Index record collection at MyHeritage
- Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 record collection at MyHeritage
- 1900 United States Federal Census record collection at MyHeritage
- Irish-American Catholic Genealogy at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ Patrick Hanks, Simon Lenarčič, and Peter McClure, Dictionary of American Family Names (Second Edition, Oxford, 2022).
- ↑ Native Americans in the Census, 1860-1890. National Archives
- ↑ Tracing Your Roots: Were Slaves’ Surnames Like Brands? The Root
- ↑ Infographic: What are the Most Common Last Names in Florida? Miami New Times
- ↑ Sandra Marklin, ‘Encounter On The Great Plains: Scandinavian Settlers and the Dispossession of Dakota Indians, 1890–1930’, in The Social Science Journal, Vol. 55 (2018), pp. 79–80.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Most Common Last Names in Your State. Reader's Digest
- ↑ 50 most common last names in America. AL.com
- ↑ Top 100 Most Common Last Names in the United States. ThoughtCo