Rarest last name in America

Apparently the ignorance of context with respect to those names is fairly common in India.

That site is pure, juvenile fun:

There are 2,354 people in the U.S. with the last name “Boner”.

There are 306 people in the U.S. with the last name “Cock”.

There are 169 people in the U.S. named “Mike Hunt”.

There are 22 people in the U.S. named “Harry Weiner”.

There is 1 person in the U.S. named “Harry Balls”.

:smiley:

For true giggles, one of those Boners used to be Mayor of Nashville. There are those who feel he was aptly named.

Nm

Harry Baals was the mayor of my hometown in the 1930-1940s. :slight_smile: There’s a street named after him but people kept stealing the sign so it got changed to HW Baals Drive.

It appears that Hitler is a more popular first name than last. Fewer than 117 for last name (surprise), but fewer than 1578 for first name.

Mother: Honey, we must have a unique name for our love child and I’m betting there will not be any other Hitlers in his school.

Dad: And the kids will fear him as well. Hitler Wittgenstein it is.

According to this page on PBS.org: “The 2000 census found over 6 million surnames total, the vast majority (about 65%) held by just one person.”

I’ve since found out that rather than a misspelling it’s actually an older spelling of the name. That spelling has died out in Switzerland but survives in three families in the US, including mine.

That’s got to be some kind of glitch. There can’t be 3+ million people in the US with unique surnames.

Years ago I heard of a man named Xerxes Zzyzzx (with a son named Hero):

Yeah, that’s one in 100 people with a unique last name. Most people are going to have at least a few family members that they share a name with.

My vote would go to indifferent census-takers and other folks trying to hide.

I tried that site, and got told that I was the only one with my name in the US. That is not correct, as I have 2 other living relatives with the same name.

No, no, no, that’s not 4 million people with unique names. It says right there-- “the vast majority (about 65%) held by just one person”. So there’s one guy out there somewhere with 4 million last names.

Here’s a candidate: Janice “Lokelani” Keihanaikukauakahihulihe’ekahaunaele

BTW, I checked several news reports of this story and most did not actually include the okina (represented by the apostrophe) in her name that they mention in the story. Also I note her old drivers license did not have the okina either.

Presumably the guy who legally changed his name to “Trout Fishing In America” doesn’t have a lot of people with the same last name (whatever part of that is the last.)

If it’s just “America”, I doubt that’s unique, but “Fishing in America” would be. But if we’re going to allow people who change their name to whatever, then consider Metta World Peace (who Charles Barkley still calls Ron) or various names from this thread.

Congratulations! You’re now officially an artifact! :stuck_out_tongue:

My second middle name is quite unusual, and was my paternal grandmother’s maiden name. Each of her three children were given it as a middle name, and I believe all of their children (that is five people, including my sister and myself) were given it too. My two children and my sister’s child also have it as a middle name, but I have not had any contact with my cousins on that side of the family since we were children, so I do not know whether they have children who have the name too, but I would not be surprised if at least some of them do.

The name is similar to a rather rare, but not vanishingly rare, Cornish name, and family folklore (or speculation) has it that it probably originated as a misspelling of the Cornish name amongst a branch of that family who migrated from Cornwall to Wales (my father and his parents were Welsh).

Anyway, until earlier this month I had never come across or heard of anyone who was not a descendant of my grandmother who had this name, and no-one except my grandmother herself who had it as a last name. (Many Welsh last names, such as Jones, Evans, Thomas, Morgan, Price, etc., are very common, even amongst people who are far removed from any Welsh origins, but this one is a definite exception.) However, while web surfing a couple of weeks ago I came across an article about a woman who is a professor at Stanford University who has it a a last name. Although her ethnic roots were not directly discussed in the article, there was enough to strongly suggest that she has Welsh roots of which she is very conscious and proud. Given how rare the name seems to be in Britain, and even in Wales, it is probably very rare in the United States. She may be the only one (apart from my daughters, who have it as a middle name).

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My Jewish uncle (the husband of my mother’s sister) also has a very unusual last name, seemingly a modified form of a Russian name. According to his family tradition, one of his ancestors in the 19th century was driver of the Tsar’s train, and, perhaps for that reason the family took an ethnically Russian rather than a typically Jewish name. (Would they really have given such a job to a Jew? Thinking about it now, it seems a bit unlikely, but I don’t know.) Anyway, at some point the family migrated from Russia to Belgium (where I think he still has relatives that he is in touch with), and then his branch (probably either his grandfather or father, I am not sure) migrated to England. Anyway, he tells me in his whole life (he is now 93) he has never come across more than about two people, apart from fairly close relatives, who share the name. He has a son, but the son has no children and is now too old to be likely to have any, so the name will die out in his branch of his family.

A few years ago I came across a book by an American author with a name similar to that of my uncle and cousin, but spelled slightly differently. I showed the book to my uncle, and he began to speculate whether the author might be a relative of his, coming to the conclusion that the author (who was quite elderly by the time I discovered him) was probably the son of a relative (I am not quite sure what the relationship was, but probably someone of his father’s generation) whom he recalled as having emigrated to the United States (I presume from Belgium). Again, given how rare the name seems to be in Britain (and probably Belgium too), it is probably very rare in the USA, especially as it has undergone a change in spelling there.

But no, I am not going to tell you what the names are.

My uncle came over from Sweden some time before the Second World War. I’m not sure if what happened was a misspelling or what, but all 13 people in Canada with that name are related to him. He had a brother, though, in the States, so presumable there are more.