The surname “Kim” seems very common in Korea. What is the number of Kims in Korea, per capita? Also, what is the highest per-capita incidence of a surname in any country?
Not sure, but you might want to check “Jensen” (and variants) in Denmark.
Smith, by a long way, in the USA.
Peace,
Mike Smith
I mean
mangeorge
http://www.harvardchina.org/SpecialEvents/05-02-2002.htm is an interesting article on last names in China. Of note, roughly 140 million Chinese have the last name of Zhang.
Singh (is that spelled right?) is popular in Berkeley. Other places too, or so I’ve heard.
Yes, but only a little more than 1% of the population is named Smith. The top ten surnames, according to the 1990 census are
SMITH 1.006%
JOHNSON 0.810
WILLIAMS 0.699
JONES 0.621
BROWN 0.621
DAVIS 0.480
MILLER 0.424
WILSON 0.339
MOORE 0.312
TAYLOR 0.311
Is there a link to that info so I could check out other surnames? I’m asking because of the lack of a reply to this thread I started a few days ago. I’d also be grateful for any opinions on the relative accuracy of such surveys,compared to telephone directories or electoral rolls.
http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/freqnames.html is the source. You can hit “search the name files” on that page if you are looking for a certain name.
I doubt that is what you are looking for. The census data is probably incredibly accurate, compared to searching by phone book. Election registrations wouldn’t likely be very representative, at least not using a scarce name.
"good morning, Zhang,Thu, Smith & Patal,Miss Jensen speaking… I am sorry but Mr.Garcia is in a meeting with Mrs. kim. "
A very large percentage of Vietnamese are named Nguyen. Somewhere around 40%, I think. I heard that the original Nguyen was a famous general and lots of other people adopted his name.
Among the Amish, something like 80% are named Stoltzfus.
Approximately 2.6% of global net-worth is possessed by the Mads. Eventually, any family line that passes its accumulated wealth from generation to generation will be addressed as “Mad”. It is not all a bed of roses. I have not been propositioned for sex for almost two days. Can you believe it?
You got a cite for that? In which state?
The Amish in Lancaster County, PA. My source is a 60 Minutes report from many years ago. I’m afraid I couldn’t find a Internet site that confirmed it.
In Sweden the two most common surnames are Johansson and Andersson, each with about 3% of the population.
If you add all the Johansson, Jonsson, Jansson, Jönsson, Johnsson, Jonasson, Johanson and Jensen you get 5.4%
I’m around Amish people at least several times a year. Next time I get a chance, I’ll ask a few and see what they say.
I spend a LOT of time in “Amish Country”. In the areas where I’m at (Ohio) the common last name is Yoder.
This is a guesstimate, but,…I would say that AT LEAST 50% of the Amish in the areas I am speaking of share this name.
Singh is a common name, among Indians but only really in the Sikh community (it coems from a key oncident involving one of the Sikh gurus), IIRC it means ‘lion’ and was orginally a title rather than a surname that only men could use (there was an equivalent title for women).
I wouldn’t have included Jonasson, it’s not related. Hansson is, though.
And talking about variations of names, I have read somewhere (no cite) that the most common name in Chinese is Wang (Wong, Weng et al).
Why does the OP contain the qualifier “per capita”?
I thought the thread would be about “Does a typical Wilson earn more or less than the average Jones? And which surname earns the most?”
Per capita doesn’t have to be connected to money, it literally means ‘per head’ (decapitate) or something to that effect. Usually you’ll see it in connection to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) which is related to money.
However, I still can’t grasp quite what the use of ‘per capita’ in the OP is.