Never mind.
I would consider three of those–Jones, Evans, and Johnson–to be essentially the same name. They all mean Son of John (Evan being a Welsh form of John).
I believe it’s true of Russian as well – “Kuznetsov”, meaning “Smith”, is one of the most common names.
Ed
I’m wondering why Abbott is a fairly common surname.
Yeah, that’s gotta be tough to explain to the Pope. “I’m an Abbot, my father was an Abbot, and his father was an Abbot. Oh wait…”
Likewise Ḥaddād in Arabic, or Sedaris in Greek, or Kovács in Hungarian, or Ferrari/Ferraro in Italian, or Herrera in Spanish.
If google is any guide, I’m the only Bryan Ekers on Earth.
I’ve even heard tell of one gentleman who’s officially named Mr. Javaprogrammer.
Biffy, it had never occurred to me that Evans is an equivalent to Johnson, but now that you point it out, it’s obvious.
Back when I was a kid, I truly and honestly believed that I was the last male carrier of my last name on Earth, and was very relieved when one of my uncles had a kid. Since then, I’ve discovered that there’s an entire large branch of the family that Dad had always left out of the genealogies due to a family feud some generations back, plus multiple other waves of immigrants that chose the same Americanization we did, plus a fair number with the name in Germany, plus an assortment of close variations on the name.
Because he managed to clone himself by assimilating all humans in the Matrix.
They may have the same origin, but that doesn’t make them the same name. The geographic distribution of them within Britain makes that clear, with Evans being very Welsh. Unless you want to also argue that ‘Juan’, ‘Eoin’ and ‘Ivan’ are the same 
Since the context of this discussion is the origin of the names, yes, I would consider (not “argue”) that names that are patronymics based on John (or its local equivalent) are essentially the same name, just as all the “smith” names in various languages mentioned here are fundamentally the same thing.
BTW, isn’t Jones also very Welsh?
Didn’t Miller have a negative connotation in England at one point - hence it becoming unpopular unlike the German version? I have a vague uncitable memory of dodgy scales up at the mill.
The Hebrew word for smith, nappaḥ, is very rare as a Hebrew surname. Probably because the language was revived for the modern age right when automobiles made blacksmithing essentially obsolete.
It may be that the few Napachs in the phone book used to be Schmidts or Kowalskis etc., and translated the name into Hebrew when that became the Zionist thing to do, like the guy named Green who changed his name to Ben-Gurion. (OK, that example wasn’t a translation but a phonetically similar word. I’m pretty sure there were outright surname translations into Hebrew, I just can’t think of any offhand right now.)
And, as we all know, the smith, a mighty man is he.
Or, for that matter, the name Pope. Or Bishop.
The French equivalents, Lefebvre, Lefèvre, and other spellings such as Fabre, Favre, and Faure, are also pretty common - Lefebvre is apparently the 13th most common name in France. (The modern French word is forgeron, although febvre, from Latin faber, survives in orfèvre, “goldsmith.”)
(While we’re on the subject, Lévesque, “the bishop,” is also a common name.)
According to this, these are the most common names in France:
- Martin 236 172 (given name)
- Bernard 131 901 (given name)
- Thomas 119 078 (given name)
- Dubois 114 001 (“of the wood”)
- Durand 111 510 (given name - not very popular anymore)
- Robert 106 161 (given name)
- Moreau 103 056 (“swarthy” - literally “Moor-like”)
- Petit 95 876 (“little”)
- Simon 95 733 (given name)
- Michel 93 581 (given name)
- Leroy 88 722 (“the king”)
- Laurent 85 243 (given name)
- Lefebvre 82 670 (“smith”)
- Bertrand 75 030 (given name)
- Roux 74 955 (“redhead”)
Yes they could. In the 14th Century, when most English people adopted surnames, a “farmer” signified a landowner rather than someone who actually worked the land.
The very common Indian surname Patel means “farmer”, though. And these days there are more Patels in England than Smiths.
The scale of Welshness?
ap Evan
Bevan
Bevans
Jones
Johnson
Actually, precisely the opposite was the case. The modern sense of ‘farmer’ as a general term for someone who cultivates land dates back only to the late sixteenth century. Earlier it had instead meant either a tenant or someone else who cultivated land on behalf of the owner. In other words, in the fourteenth century a ‘farmer’ was always someone who was not the landowner. This reflected the original meaning of the word ‘farm’, which was to rent something for a fixed sum.
(Incidentally, I wouldn’t assume that it is self-evident that smiths outnumbered landowners in fourteenth-century England. Not that it matters much, not least because landowners tended not to acquire occupational surnames anyway.)
Not according to any list so far produced here or that I’ve found through Google.
The theory I’ve heard is that these (as well as “King”) were mocking nicknames, of the flavor, “Who does that guy think he is, the Pope?”