50 Fun Facts About Surnames

Which surname, now a famous American food brand, began as a medieval nickname, 'kill hog', for a pork butcher?

Kellogg began as Kyllehog, a blunt nickname for a slaughterer of pigs, centuries before brothers John Harvey and Will Keith Kellogg made the name a cereal empire in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Which surname, shared by about 2.4 million Americans, has long ranked as the most common in the United States?

Smith was counted 2,442,977 times in the 2010 US census, about half a million ahead of second-placed Johnson. It also tops the list in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

In which Nordic country do most people take a last name from a parent's first name instead of a family surname?

Iceland still forms last names from a parent's first name plus -son or -dóttir, so a brother and sister end up with different ones and no family name passes down the generations.

Which Italian surname, also the name of a famous sports-car maker, originally described an ironworker at a forge?

Ferrari is the plural of Ferraro, a metalworker's trade name rooted in the Latin ferrum, 'iron', so Enzo Ferrari's racing cars carry the name of a village forge.

Which surname is shared by roughly one in five people in South Korea, more than ten million in all?

Kim, written with the character for gold, was counted 10,689,959 times in South Korea's 2015 census, about 21.5 percent of the population.

At which immigration station, a persistent myth claims, did American officials change newcomers' surnames?

Ellis Island inspectors simply used the names on steamship passenger lists drawn up abroad. Families who changed a surname did it themselves, on average about five years after arriving.

Which name meaning 'lion' did the tenth Sikh guru give to all Sikh men in the late 17th century?

Singh comes from the Sanskrit simha, 'lion', and was required of Sikh men partly as a rejection of caste, because a shared name hides the family background that a surname gives away.

Which occupational surname originally described a craftsman who made and repaired wooden barrels, casks and vats?

Cooper is the old word for a barrel maker, and the trade lives on in the cooperages that still build oak casks for whisky and wine.

Which surname, from a Gaelic personal name meaning 'sea warrior', is the most common in Ireland?

Murphy anglicises Ó Murchadha and Mac Murchaidh, built on the Irish words muir, 'sea', and cath, 'battle', and emigration then spread it across the English-speaking world.

Surnames ending in -ian or -yan, such as Kardashian and Khachaturian, usually trace back to which country?

Armenia's family names typically end in -ian or -yan, a suffix that once marked a father's or ancestor's name, much as -son does in English.

Which surname, the most common in Spain, is also the highest-ranked Hispanic name in the US census?

Garcia stood 18th in the 1990 US census and climbed to sixth by 2010, edging ahead of Miller, then held that place in the 2020 count.

Which surname, borne by roughly a third of people in Vietnam, is the most common among Asian Americans?

Nguyen spread as families adopted it when Vietnamese dynasties fell, and in the United States it jumped from 229th place in the 1990 census to 38th in 2010.

Which occupational surname named the medieval craftsman who made arrows, a vital trade in the age of the longbow?

Fletcher comes from the Old French fleche, 'arrow'. The bow itself was the work of a bowyer, and the feathers on an arrow are still called its fletching.

The surname of Formula One champion Michael Schumacher is German for a maker of which everyday goods?

Shoes were the trade behind Schumacher, the German twin of the English surname Shoemaker, and the name went on to be shared by racing brothers Michael and Ralf.

The Spanish surname López, shared by singer Jennifer Lopez, traces back to the Latin word for which animal?

Wolf is the meaning behind López: the name meant 'son of Lope', and Lope comes from the Latin lupus, the root that also gives English the word lupine.

Which Norman-French prefix meaning 'son of' opens the surnames of novelist F. Scott and jazz singer Ella?

Fitz comes from the Old French fiz, 'son', and Norman kings used it for their acknowledged illegitimate children, who were called fitz Roy, 'son of the king'.

Which occupational surname described a medieval worker who roofed houses with bundles of straw or reeds?

Thatcher is the roofer's trade name that Margaret Roberts took on marrying Denis Thatcher in 1951, 28 years before she became Britain's prime minister.

Which surname, shared by football strikers Gerd and Thomas, is the most common family name in Germany?

Müller is the German word for a grain miller, and it also tops the surname tables in Switzerland and in two French departments on the German border.

Powell, Price and Pritchard all began with 'ap', a word for 'son of', in the language of which country?

Wales turned ap Hywel into Powell, ap Rhys into Price and ap Richard into Pritchard, while ab Owen was squeezed into Bowen.

Which Jewish surname comes from the Hebrew word for a priest and often marks a family line of Temple priests?

Cohen is the Hebrew kohen, 'priest', and bearing it often, though not always, indicates that a family's male-line ancestors served in the Temple of Jerusalem.

Which occupational surname named the medieval tradesman who made and sold candles for homes and churches?

Chandler is the English twin of the French surnames Candelier and Chandelier, and its earliest record is a Matthew le Candeler living in London in 1274.

Which occupational surname described a worker who earned a living cutting felled timber into planks and beams?

Sawyer names the trade of sawing wood, and Mark Twain later gave it to literature's most famous fence-painting schoolboy, Tom Sawyer.

Which surname, famous from the cover of an American dictionary, originally described a weaver of cloth?

Webster means weaver, a trade name that Noah Webster's American Dictionary of 1828 turned into a byword for American spelling.

Which surname named a medieval cloth worker who trampled wet woollen fabric underfoot to clean and thicken it?

Walker described someone who literally walked on raw, damp cloth to thicken it, the same fulling trade that produced the surnames Fuller and Tucker.

Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman, a variant of a German surname that names which skilled trade?

Carpenter is the meaning of Zimmermann. Zimmer, now the German for a room, once meant timber and is a cousin of that English word, so the name is literally 'timber man'.

The German surname Schneider, from a verb meaning 'to cut', matches which English occupational surname?

Taylor is the match: both names belong to the person who cuts cloth into clothes, and the English one comes from the Old French tailleur, 'cutter'.

Which hyphenated surname did Queen Elizabeth II approve in 1960 for members of her family who need one?

Mountbatten-Windsor joins the royal house name to Prince Philip's adopted surname, and Princess Anne used it in her marriage register entry in 1973.

The royal House of Stuart took its surname from which hereditary office its founders held in Scotland?

High Steward of Scotland was the family's hereditary post from the 12th century, and Mary, Queen of Scots, raised in France, adopted the French spelling Stuart.

Which surname, a nickname for an ancestor with red hair, is said to be the most common in Italy?

Rossi is the plural of Rosso, 'red-haired', and its famous bearers include motorcycle champion Valentino Rossi and 1982 World Cup hero Paolo Rossi.

Which surname, derived from the name of the Roman god of war, is the most common in France?

Martin comes from the Latin Martinus, 'of Mars', and its spread is credited to Saint Martin of Tours, long the most popular French saint.

Which surname, held by about two million people, is the most common in Japan, just ahead of Suzuki?

Sato is said to combine the 'sa' of Sano with a character from the Fujiwara clan, meaning 'Fujiwara of Sano', after a Heian-period commander's heirs.

Which surname, from a word that originally meant 'forest', is the most common in Brazil?

Silva may come from places in Iberia named for their woodland, and Portugal's empire carried it to Africa and Asia, where it is still found in India and Sri Lanka.

England's first family names are generally traced to the compiling of which record after the Norman Conquest?

Domesday Book, drawn up in 1086, listed landholders across England, and by 1400 most English families had settled on a hereditary surname.

Which term describes a surname formed from a father's given name, such as Johnson or Ivanov?

Patronymic joins the Greek pater, 'father', and onyma, 'name', and the same idea lies behind Wilson, Fernández and Petrov.

Which American suffragist defied custom by keeping her birth surname after marrying Henry Blackwell in 1855?

Lucy Stone saw a wife's change of name as the legal erasure of her identity, and American women who keep their maiden names were nicknamed 'Lucy Stoners'.

Which European country traditionally writes the family name before the given name, as China, Japan and Korea do?

Hungary uses the Eastern name order, so the composer known abroad as Zoltán Kodály is Kodály Zoltán at home.

Which country's 1934 Surname Law required every citizen to adopt a fixed, hereditary family name?

Turkey passed the law under Mustafa Kemal, and a companion act that November bestowed a surname on the president himself: Atatürk.

Which Asian country made surnames compulsory in 1913 and bans any new one that copies an existing family's?

Thailand had no surnames until King Vajiravudh's act, and because each must be unique to one family, Thai surnames are usually quite long.

Which name do Sikh women traditionally share, introduced by the tenth guru alongside a matching name for men?

Kaur is glossed as 'crown princess', and it is sometimes translated 'lioness', not because of its etymology but to mirror the name given to men.

The Irish surname prefix O', as in O'Neill and O'Connor, comes from a Gaelic word with which meaning?

Descendant is the sense of the Irish Ó, historically written Ua, while Mac means 'son'; in a woman's surname Ó is replaced by Ní.

Which occupational surname comes from an Old English word for a builder of wagons and carts?

Wainwright joins wain, an old word for a wagon, to wright, a maker or builder, and it goes back to the pre-7th-century Old English waegnwyrhta.

Which surname, sharing a root with the word 'cheap', originally described a merchant or market trader?

Chapman comes from the Old English ceapmann, 'market man', and the same root named Cheapside, the London street that began as a marketplace.

Which surname, from the Old French for 'dispenser', named the officer who gave out a household's provisions?

Spencer shortens the Old French despensier, and its best-known bearers include the poet Edmund Spenser and Lady Diana Spencer, later Princess Diana.

Which surname began as the feminine form of the medieval English trade name for a bread maker?

Baxter was first written Bakster and used for women, with Baker as the masculine form, before both names came to be applied to either sex.

Which surname comes from the medieval English official whose title also survives inside the word 'sheriff'?

Reeve named the officer who ran a manor or district, and the king's 'shire reeve', who managed a whole county, was contracted over time into sheriff.

The medieval surname Farmer was given not to people who grew crops but to those who collected what?

Taxes and tithes were what the first Farmers gathered, chiefly the payments due on agricultural leases; the crop-growing sense of the word came later.

The occupational surname Leach comes from an Old English word for a member of which profession?

Physician was the sense of the Old English laece, a healer whose stock treatment was bloodletting, the practice that ties the surname to the leech.

Which Italian surname, literally 'exposed', was once customarily given to abandoned babies in foundling homes?

Esposito comes from the Latin expositus, 'placed outside', and some orphanages kept a 'wheel of the exposed' where an unwanted child could be left.

Which surname described a medieval interpreter, taking its name from the language such translators had to know?

Latimer literally means 'one knowing Latin', and its best-known bearer is Hugh Latimer, the English bishop and Protestant martyr who died in 1555.

Which Founding Father's surname was the medieval English word for a landowner of free but not noble birth?

Franklin meant a freeholder ranking just below the gentry, and Geoffrey Chaucer made one of them a pilgrim and storyteller in The Canterbury Tales.