Most Famous Person With Your Family Name

[Qin Shi Huangdi]

Who's the most famous person who shares your family (or in the West last) name?

In the United States Seung-Hui Cho, Virginia Tech shooter

[Lamar Mundane]

My last name is not common - I rarely see it anywhere, but there is a car dealer in a major American city whose billboards litter the city. I get distracted seeing my name everywhere when driving there.

Since it is uncommon, I am not going to name it.

[Smeghead]

A Nobel Prize winner no one's heard of.

[Rhiannon8404]

My original last name is Felton. Tom Felton is pretty famous for playing Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series.

[MareIt]

Langston Hughes and/or John Hughes.

I have neither the literary talent of the first or the wealth of the 2nd.

[Antinor01]

Probably the actor Stephen Rea. Historically there are several that are famous in certain parts of the world, but not as well known now.

[elfkin477]

There are only 1600 people in the world with my surname - one of those lovely Ellis Island creations - and the most famous are the manager of a baseball team, and a sports writer for a paper in Massachusetts. After that, me maybe: you can get lots of google hits for my Bulwer-Lytton win in 2008

[Frank]

My name is probably most widely known here in Missouri.

Four different major league baseball players (one close to Hall of Fame quality), all of whom played (at some point in their career) in Missouri.

"Are you related to . . .?" I get that a lot.

No national or international fame or notoriety.

[Colibri]

Pretty certainly me. My last name is very rare; as far as I can tell, there are about 30 people in the world who share it. And I've published much more than any one else with my name.

[runner pat]

An assassinated U.S. President.

[sachertorte]

Originally Posted by Qin Shi Huangdi

Who's the most famous person who shares your family (or in the West last) name?

In the United States Seung-Hui Cho, Virginia Tech shooter

I'm pretty sure John Cho is more famous than that guy. While I knew the shooter was Korean, I would have no idea what the same was. Forced to guess, I would have guessed Kim just to play the percentages.

Mine is Time's Man of the Year.

[kunilou]

A Hungarian pilot (no relation) with 11 confirmed kills in World War 2. Unfortunately, Hungary was on the side of the Axis in World War 2.

[gwendee]

A Prime Minister of the UK.

[kenobi 65]

Originally Posted by MareIt

Langston Hughes and/or John Hughes.

I'd suspect that Howard surpasses them both (though, perhaps not as much anymore, since he's been dead for 35 years).

[kenobi 65]

I have a pretty uncommon surname, and, AFAIK, no one really famous has it. The most "famous" would be a guy who used to be fairly senior at Microsoft, and founded the company which provides real-time traffic data using the GPS systems in smartphones.

[twickster]

A poet/translator.

[Sternvogel]

Either this guy or this chick.

[Mahaloth]

An overweight TV actor.

[John DiFool]

Originally Posted by Frank

My name is probably most widely known here in Missouri.

Four different major league baseball players (one close to Hall of Fame quality), all of whom played (at some point in their career) in Missouri.

For me, it's a recent highly-touted Major-League baseball draftee. As far as I know he is the only person with my surname that I've seen in the news and/or from historical records (tho I've seen it in fiction). He even has the same middle name that I do...

Dang, I hate tip-toeing around the issue just to protect my online anonymity.

[blondebear]

I share my surname with a peanut farmer from Georgia.

[Sampiro]

Either a U.S. Army general from WW2 who had a couple of movies made about him or a really hardcore English evangelist who was one of the ancestors of modern day Christian Fundamentalism. The general is a descendant of my g-g-g-g-grandfather and judging by where he was from the evangelist probably shared my ancestry, but neither is closely related by any means.

[Lobsang]

If my mum had been my Dad I'd have the most common surname in the UK. But my dad was my dad so I have what might be one of the rarer ones. Trust me there are no famous, by current definitions of 'famous', people with my surname.

[foolsguinea]

Originally Posted by Qin Shi Huangdi

Who's the most famous person who shares your family (or in the West last) name?

In the United States Seung-Hui Cho, Virginia Tech shooter

You've never heard of Frank Cho or Margaret Cho? Much more famous.

[Kyla]

No one. My last name is hyphenated and my family are the only people who have. And we're not famous.

I can't think of anyone famous with either parts of my name, either. I don't think anyone's ever asked if I'm related to someone famous. Although one of them is the name of a very famous street in New York City, and I have joked that it's named after one of my ancestors.

My family is not exciting.

[hogarth]

There's a professor in England who has written a few books. But my last name is pretty damn rare.

[Jamicat]

Alexander Graham Bell...

[Drain Bead]

Part of having one of the most common surnames in the English-speaking world is that I have too many choices for this question. A common in-joke between me and my husband involves us referring to anyone sharing our last name as "cousin." The first one to pop into my head was Cousin Dante, a kick returner for the Chiefs, but he's nowhere near the most famous, just the first one to jump into my brain.

[suranyi]

A Hungarian economist and onetime government official. Highly unlikely that anyone outside Hungary would have heard of him.

[Sunspace]

There's a mountain and a couple of towns out west with my family name on them. Unfortunately, I'm not actually related to the people they were named after.

[Der Trihs]

General Sherman.

[Ponch8]

1. a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model
2. an Olympic runner who famously lost her big race

[pravnik]

Staff Sgt. Max Fightmaster.

[Siam Sam]

There was a Hungarian scientist who appeared on a postage stamp in the 19th century. A botanist, I think. My uncle, who has done a lot of research into out family tree, believes we are related even though the particular branch of the family with our surname comes from the St. Gallen area of Switzerland, traced back to 1690.

[Malleus, Incus, Stapes!]

A theologian and a media personality. Both with the same exact name. Which is also the name of my uncle. What can I say, it seems to be a popular combination.

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by Siam Sam

the particular branch of the family with our surname comes from the St. Gallen area of Switzerland, traced back to 1690.

We're probably distant cousins. St. Gallen/Appenzell is where my family is from.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Colibri

We're probably distant cousins. St. Gallen/Appenzell is where my family is from.

We know who left Switzerland to go to the New World. He was the 15th of 15 children! Imagine that. No one would have blamed the parents for stopping at half that, but I'm glad they didn't. From the family tree, it looks like half his siblings died in infancy. Still, probably not much land left to spread around, so he took off. I have traveled to Switzerland met the family members still there today.

[Rick]

Looking at Wiki more than I thought I share a lasts name with:
*
o Either of the two saints named martyrs in Old Saxony about 695.
o a Danish dramatist and poet.
o a German orientalist and theologian
o a pioneer of X-ray diffraction and crystallography.
o the evolutionary biologist specializing in the evolution of infectious disease.
o A Russian composer.


* Concepts
o The ----- construction, a method for reconstructing a crystal structure from an x-ray diffraction pattern, or -----'s sphere, a mathematical tool used in that process.
o The summation
Oh yeah ETA my last name is the first name of one of the sailors captured on the U-505 during WWII

[wmulax93]

No one. Only 13 people have my last name.

[Isamu]

A character from a Dickens novel.

[silenus]

If you allow the alternate spelling, the Man In The Glass Booth.

[gonzomax]

Theres a Loni and an Anthony a Louie and John, theres a Marian a Pamela and a Richard Dean.
I could go on for a long time.

[hajario]

Only two or three dozen people in the world have my last name. If you Google it, half of the hits are for my Dad so I'll go with him.

[Kamino Neko]

I have one of the most common surnames in the English language.

Writers, artists, models, athletes, politicians, actors, musicians - dozens share my first and last names, let alone just the last!

Martin Luther King jr is probably the most famous, though there are many other ones who are pretty high - Stephen King, Carol King, Rodney King, or Don King, for instance.

[Snnipe 70E]

Norman Bates

[Suburban Plankton]

I've never heard of anyone having my last name who was not a member of my family, and none of us are famous as far as I am aware.

[Robot Arm]

With the same spelling, no one. Only twice in my lifetime have I seen my last name associated with someone I didn't know I was related to. I've checked phone books for decent sized cities; none.

If we change the spelling, there was a voice actress who did a lot of work in radio and then cartoons in the '60s and '70s. Had a few on-screen credits, but I've only seen her once in a rerun of an old TV show.

[Robot Arm]

Hmm, I wonder if Suburban Plankton and I are related.

[Nava]

A cousin who was a mountain climber.

In a very different set of circles, both a second cousin who's got a PhD in History and has published several articles and a book on heraldry, and a second uncle who was a musicologist specialising in Baroque music; he was a university professor and had a list of publications as long as a basketball player's arm.

[Noone Special]

A famous 15-century biblical scholar and translator, who was also a Spanish politician.

[ZipperJJ]

A German chancellor.