The Most Common English and American Surnames

Surely you have ever wondered what the most common English surnames are, either out of curiosity or to use it in some type of work that requires giving Anglophone names to different people. And surely, before looking for it, you have come to mind a few “Williams” ?  “Most Common US Surnames” ?  “Taylor” ?

Well yes, those three surnames are among the most used today in English-speaking countries, but none of them is the most common of all. That honor goes to someone else who you were probably about to say: “Smith . ”

And it is that according to some of the latest studies carried out in the 6 main countries of Anglophone tradition – England, Ireland, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand- the surname “Smith” is the only one that appears within the TOP-10 of each and every one of them.

Although in fact, if it were not for the exception of Ireland, this plenary session would be repeated in the case of “Wilson” . And if in addition to Ireland, we discount Canada (where we remember French is also the official language) we have two other surnames that are among the most used in both England and the United States and on the two oceanic islands; “Jones” and “Williams” . Curious no?

Well, despite being the most used surname in English-speaking countries, “Smith” is only eighth in terms of the world ranking, behind Hispanic surnames such as ” Hernández” “González” or “García” and far of the Asians “Whang” “Zhang” or “Li”, which counting all its variants, has the honor of being the most common surname in the world. But beware, not only in eastern countries, and because of the large amount of historical immigration, it also takes the first place on the list in  Canada!

And where does “Smith” come from ? Well, the commonly accepted theory says that its origin is in the way of referring to a metal worker, that is, a blacksmith. And in turn, this would be a derivation of the old English term ” smitan “, which would come to mean in Castilian “hurt, hit.” Its correct pronunciation is like this:

The truth is that it is very common to see Anglo-Saxon surnames that come from some trade. In this video we can see some of them:

Also curious is the case of Ireland, where despite the fact that the most frequent surname of all continues to be “Murphy” , we also find “O Kelly” “O Sullivan” “O Brien” “O Connor ”“ O Ryan ” or “ O Neill ” . This “Ó” (converted into “O ” in English where there are no accents) comes from Gaelic and means “grandson or descendant of”. Also very widespread in Ireland, although less than in Scotland, would be the “Mac” and its abbreviated version “Mc”(they are exactly the same word) which would come to mean “son of”. In fact there is a curious anecdote that speaks of a group of Scots with the surname “Mac Donald” (“son of the chief”) who settled in Spain in the Middle Ages and gave rise to the Castilianized “Maldonado” .

In the same way, a very similar origin have surnames of the type “Wilson” (they are of William) “Anderson” (they are of Andrew) “Jackson” (they are of Jack) etc. But then what happens to women’s surnames?

The answer to this is found in the tradition spread throughout the Anglo-Saxon world in which the wife takes the husband’s surname at the time of marrying him (or adds it to hers) and the child receives only the father’s. What you probably did not know is that the exception to this practice can be found in Wales, where the descendant receives only the maternal surname.