Q 01/05

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

A) Heinz

B) Kellogg

C) Hershey

D) Kraft

Answer · why

B) Kellogg

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 ce...

Q 02/05

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

A) Johnson

B) Williams

C) Brown

D) Smith

Answer · why

D) Smith

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 King...

Q 03/05

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

A) Iceland

B) Norway

C) Finland

D) Sweden

Answer · why

A) Iceland

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 ...

Q 04/05

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

A) Lamborghini

B) Maserati

C) Ferrari

D) Pagani

Answer · why

C) Ferrari

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 vil...

Q 05/05

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

A) Park

B) Kim

C) Choi

D) Jung

Answer · why

B) Kim

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.