# Rarest last name in America **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 14, 2013, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647 "2013-04-14T00:46:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/21 "2013-04-14T04:50:26Z")
Both my kids have unique last names, as it’s hyphenated. They’re it. I bet they’re others. ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/22 "2013-04-14T04:57:33Z")
> [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > There are about a dozen people in my family who currently have my last name. As far as I know, we’re the only ones with our name in the country, though I haven’t researched the issue thoroughly. > > It’s possible the number is a bit larger than I think; I have a male cousin whose family makeup I’m only guessing at… There’s 17 Planktons in Dallas alone! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/23 "2013-04-14T09:49:50Z")
My last name is Greek. When my grandfather came over from Greece, the folks at Ellis Island took one look at his last name and said Americans can’t pronounce that. They created a shortened version that didn’t have so many consonants in a row at the front and fewer confusing vowel combinations in the middle. The end result is very short and simple. In 1936 there were only two people in the U.S. with that last name, my grandfather and his brother. They got married and had children and their children got married and had children, etc. so now there’s a fair number of us, but everyone int he U.S. with that last name is related. My name isn’t on the list in Kimmy\_Gibbler’s link, which doesn’t surprise me. I know there are less than 100 of us (probably somewhere between 20 and 30). Completely by coincidence, there is a chain of hotels in Finland with the exact same name (obviously though it comes from a completely different derivation). ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/24 "2013-04-14T09:50:53Z")
280 of us in the US, though one is currently in the process of reproducing, so in about 2 months there will be 281 😛 and we are all related. There are more of the surname in Europe, and many of them seem to be involved with mathematics. Pity it isn’t genetic, my maths skills suck ass ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/25 "2013-04-14T10:00:48Z")
> [@NoClueBoy](#): > > You’ve been here 350 years? How old were you when you moved here? > > There can be only one! > I used to think my last name was rather unique. Turns out, I can google any number of people with my entire name, not just my last name. Like A Whitney Brown once said about a billion people in China, "even if you’re a [one-in-a-million type of guy](http://thinkexist.com/quotes/a._whitney_brown/), there are still a thousand guys exactly like you.” > . Yes, I am wondering how people proved to themselves their surnames are very rare ? Their distant cousins may have travelled to the USA separately and work as police officers, FBI , NSA or something else secretive. Its hard to know about the none-existance of something. My surname came from England but its not spelt the same there. It was changed upon arrive in Australia, due to there already being enough French Irish of the same surname, my family with the same name in Australia spell it the french way too. ---
**Author:** ![joebuck20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/74df32/32.png) [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/26 "2013-04-14T14:10:52Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Anybody know of any statistics on how many Obama there are – in the United States, or anywhere? According to this Washington Post article from a few years ago, there are about 20 Obama families in the United States. Most of them have Equatorial Guinean roots, but a few are Japanese. [http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-11-28/news/36916930\_1\_names-rise-inauguration-tickets-graduate-student](http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-11-28/news/36916930_1_names-rise-inauguration-tickets-graduate-student) ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/27 "2013-04-14T14:48:40Z")
Since the letters X,Y,and Z are the rarest letters in the English language, I would expect that surnames starting with these to be rare. How many “Zeltzers” do you know? ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/28 "2013-04-14T14:55:41Z")
> [@drew870mitchell](#): > > [How many of me](http://howmanyofme.com/) > > That should help rule out names that people think are rare but aren’t very. I wouldn’t trust it as a proof of absence though. That is, if you look up Bob Wehadababy-Itsaboy there and they say no results, it’s possible he just wasn’t in the database they pulled. Their FAQ says they had to drop about 10% of values that were unique or rare. It says 117 people with my father’s last name. 1161 with my stepfather’s. ---
**Author:** ![USCDiver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uscdiver/32/354_2.png) [@USCDiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/USCDiver)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/29 "2013-04-14T15:04:26Z")
There an NBA player with the last name World Peace, although as far as i can tell, it isnt clear whether his middle name is World and his last name Peace. He might be the ony one. ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/30 "2013-04-14T16:06:17Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Since the letters X,Y,and Z are the rarest letters in the English language, I would expect that surnames starting with these to be rare. How many “Zeltzers” do you know? None, but I used to know quite a few Zimmermanns. Pennsylvania, you know. (Also Youngs and Yoders.) Searches have indicated that if there are at most a handful of people with my last name in the US who are not descendants of my paternal grandfather. Since he had two sons, who have between them five descendants who both 1) live in the US and 2) still use that last name, that makes it a quite rare surname in the US. In Germany and Austria, it appears to be uncommon, but not freakishly rare. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/31 "2013-04-14T16:39:11Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > Both my kids have unique last names, as it’s hyphenated. They’re it. I bet they’re others. My daughter’s is hyphenated too, making her the only person in the world with that last name. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/32 "2013-04-14T17:46:18Z")
> [@moriah](#): > > Searched Facebook, LinkedIn, and an online phone directory. Couldn’t find anyone with the last name of ‘Rarest’. > > True story. I also do stupid research for sake of a GQ joke (I think that’s what you did :)) and sometimes come up with interesting stuff. Mark of a GQ-er, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/33 "2013-04-14T19:07:25Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > One interesting thing is the percentage of people with stereotypically Spanish last names who, according to that census data, are not Hispanic. For example, 7.3 percent of people named Rodriguez and 9.19 percent of people named Garcia denied that they were Hispanic (or a family member who was filling out the form for them denied for them). I was speculating about this. Of these non-Hispanic Garcias, Rodriguezes, etc., how many are: > > 1. Non-Hispanics married to Hispanic men who have taken their husband’s name, the stereotypically example of course being Mrs. Lucy McGillicuddy Ricardo of TV. > 2. Non-Hispanics adopted into a Hispanic family and given that name. > 3. People from a culture that had been conquered by the Spanish at some point and had Spanish names imposed on them but who now identify as non-Hispanic. Do Filipinos commonly consider themselves Hispanic? How about people who claim to be full-blood Aztec? > 4. People who have Hispanic heritage through their patrilineal lineage but who consider that heritage to be too diluted, remote, etc. to be an important part of them other than as a last name source. E.g. “My dad was Hispanic, but barely so. He didn’t speak a word of Spanish and even declined to claim a Hispanic scholarship because he didn’t think he deserved it. His father was somewhat Hispanic - he was born in the US and grew up speaking English but he picked up some Spanish from family members, and his father was very Hispanic and the last one born in a Spanish speaking area. My mother and my father’s mother were both Pennsylvania Dutch on both sides and that’s what I say I am.” > 5. Italians, Portuguese, etc. where the name crossed over at some point, was mistakenly spelled in the Spanish way on an immigration document and was never changed back, etc. > 6. People whose name was changed to a Hispanic one for some reason other than that listed here or descendants of that person. > > The answer is probably all of them and that we can’t really know. Afaik in the US self-identification as Hispanic, White, or Black can’t be overruled as long as the identification was personally held, and possibly not at all. > > On the other hand, 2.5% of Rosensteins are apparently Hispanic. Maybe lots of Puerto Rican girls marrying Brooklyn Jews? I saw that too … lots of Asians with last names like Delacruz or De Leon. (Or at least a greater percentage than one would expect.) My guess is that they’re Filipino. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/34 "2013-04-14T19:08:38Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Since the letters X,Y,and Z are the rarest letters in the English language, I would expect that surnames starting with these to be rare. How many “Zeltzers” do you know? I know at least one. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/35 "2013-04-14T20:29:02Z")
> [@drew870mitchell](#): > > [How many of me](http://howmanyofme.com/) > > That should help rule out names that people think are rare but aren’t very. I wouldn’t trust it as a proof of absence though. That is, if you look up Bob Wehadababy-Itsaboy there and they say no results, it’s possible he just wasn’t in the database they pulled. Their FAQ says they had to drop about 10% of values that were unique or rare. I checked my name on that site. I tried both the standard nickname for my first name, and the full one (Bob and Robert, for instance). It came up with a total of 20 people in the US. I find that a little hard to believe, since there is another person in the same city I live in with the same name - we even go to two of the same doctors. And both my first and last name are fairly common - I don’t think anyone in the USA would be surprised by either one. It’s certainly not a name you’d use in code to save money on a phone call. So…I think the site may underestimate the numbers a bit. ---
**Author:** ![FluffyBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecb155/32.png) [@FluffyBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FluffyBob)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/36 "2013-04-14T21:34:55Z")
My Step Father’s surname is Gremo, he emigrated to Canada from England in 1959, leaving behind a sister who married and took an new name. He has two adult sons, one in Toronto, the other in Beijing, my mother who took his name making for three Gremos in Canada. Occasional searches have never found any other Gremos in North America or England. Last year another Gremo in Austalia contacted them and has been putting together family history. Apparently the family originates from Malta, where there are still a few, plus one family in Australia. Its a rare name. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/37 "2013-04-15T03:46:16Z")
I remember a category in the Guinness. The rarest contrived name was Zachary ZZZZ\_\_\_\_. There were four Z’s at the start of his last name. He wanted his name to appear at the bottom of the phone listing. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/38 "2013-04-15T03:55:55Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > When I was a teen, a certain friend and I entertained ourselves by leafing through the large phone book (Los Angeles) looking for bizarre and/or unique names. One that I recall was Nakonecznyj. (Sorry if that’s you, **Colibri** :D) Wow. By a weird coincidence I knew a family growing up that had a variant spelling of that last name (all girls though, so so much for that). My own last name has under 600 people in the US with it. ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/39 "2013-04-15T04:15:37Z")
I gotta go with Hitler. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647/40 "2013-04-15T04:21:25Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > I gotta go with Hitler. There are 22 Hitlers listed in the WhitePages, including seven Adolfs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rarest-last-name-in-america/655647.md?page=3)