Tried to think of any Maori surnames that are common, and though there are a few families of significance that have dominated various regions of New Zealand, the idea of surnames is so recent (maybe 200 years at the most) there hasn’t been enough time for them to properly propagate, especially as they have cross-pollinated with European names, diluting things a bit.
Just want to note that Jones is not the second most common surname in the US. It seems to be 2nd in the UK, but in the US it’s about #4. Johnson is the second most common in the US.
Swedish, surely.
Nygren, while not very common, is a Swedish name, not a Swiss one.
In Germany “Müller” (Miller) ist the most common surname with “Schmidt” in second place.
But if you also count all the homophones, Schmidt (Schmitt, Schmitz, Schmid, Schmied, Smid, and lots more) is even more common than Müller.
The Schmidt homophones are not distributed evenly throughout Germany. If you encounter someone called “Schmitz”, you can be almost 100% sure, they are from Cologne. Schmitz are jokingly called “Cologne Nobility” because the name is so associated with the city. 
I’m a Schmitz from Cologne. When I got married my husband (who isn’t from Cologne but loves the city) took my name because he was so keen on being a “real Colognian”. He’s very very proud to be called Schmitz. 
And this is sometimes quite a problem for them
I seem to recall being told that in France the traditional generic Mr. Anybody surname used to be Dupont; but it seems the most common is Martin.
Likewise, I was once told that in Russia they use Kuznetsov (which also derives from the word for a smith) as a generic common name, but it seems the most common is Smirnov.
In Germany as in English it’s occupational names, like Schmidt and Müller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames_in_Europe
I suppose I could have looked it up. :smack: It looked more Scandinavian than any of the Swiss languages to me, but I wasn’t sure.
The Navarrese Jimenos, which are sometimes separated from the Aristas and sometimes treated as the same dynasty. Also, sometimes the ones you name Garcés are named García (same guy would get both patronymics).
At the time, the patronymics worked more like in ancient Rome (no need to come up with Wisigoth influence) or current Russia than as lastnames; they were considered part of the whole personal name. The last Jimenos didn’t consider the patronymic part of the personal name any more; it’s always been dropped in their regnal name.
Historians haven’t always been very good at respecting what people called themselves, though; for centuries, the patronymics were treated by historians as lastnames, and therefore not included in the number-counting. The numbers change depending on whether you count the patronymic as part of the name or not, so in modern texts those two García Sánchezes are listed as García Sánchez I and II respectively but older ones count García Íñiguez (great-grandfather to the first Sancho Garcés) as García I “Íñiguez”, and then we get to García II and III.
When I was studying Korean at the Defense Language Institute our instructors told us a joke about Korean names. “If you go to the top of a hill and toss a rock down it will likely hit a Kim, a Pak, or a Lee.” Others have mentioned Kim already in this thread, but there’s tons of the others as well.
The five most common last names in Norway are currently:
1 HANSEN…52135
2 JOHANSEN…49405
3 OLSEN…48375
4 LARSEN…37329
5 ANDERSEN…36591
The first not -sen names are number 14, 15 and 16, Berg, Haugen and Hagen.
There’s probably a Berg farm in 50% of all Norwegian parishes.
Thank you all for the interesting comments!
I wonder what % of these names are through assimilation. Immigrants who changed their surnames to one more common in their new country. I’d heard stories of officials changing immigrant surnames that were too difficult to chronicle at Ellis Island, but according to this Smithsonian Magazine article https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-did-ellis-island-officials-really-change-names-immigrants-180961544/, officials were well versed in multiple languages and strived to record the correct names.
Anecdotal, but I heard from my parents that many Okinawans of their generation (1920’s - 1930’s), changed their surnames to mainland Japanese (Naichi) forms because Okinawans were considered lower class. There are several local Okinawan celebrities born in the 1950’s - 1960’s who took on Japanese or Hawaiian surnames, sometimes changing them legally.
A bit of trivia. Higa is not a native Okinawan language name. It’s properly Fija or Fiija in the Okinawan dialect. It was changed to conform to the Mainland Japanese form of pronunciation. This is also true for many Okinawan surnames.
Sato is the most common name in all of Japan, but it’s relative as it’s only about 1% of people. Compare with the rest of East Asia - Kim, Lee, Park, Choi, Jung, and variants are about 54% of Korean names; Nguyen and Tran already reach 50% of Vietnamese names.
Slightly apropos on common ethnic surnames, I’m reminded of being in High School ROTC in Honolulu (ubiquitous at the time) and being addressed by our Japanese Regular Army Sergeant. “Attention, men - I am going to introduce your Commanding Officer, Captain Lee. /long pause/. That the haole Lee, not the pake Lee !” Probably not that funny unless you hear it barked out in Hawaiian-style accent to accentuate that the Captain is ‘White’, not ‘Chinese’. Guess you had to be there but I still laugh about it.
LOL!
When my brother was in the military, three of the in the unit had the same last name with their first names being alphabetically sequential. They were known as XXX A, B and C.
It makes sense to me. If a village has 10 farmers, the name of “Farmer” doesn’t do a lot to disambiguate between the families. So instead you get names like “Rivers” for the family whose farm is by the river, or “Black” for the family with the distinctive black hair, or what have you*. But there’s probably only one smith in the village, so just “Smith” will do.
- I’m just making up etymologies for these surnames for the sake of the example.
Exactly.
“Take this cart over to John.”
“Which John?”
“John the Farmer”
“Which John the Farmer? There are 27 of them. Do you mean John son of John, John son of Robert, John who lives by the river, John with black hair, John with white hair, John with brown hair, John who lives by the village green, John son of Will, John who lives by the woods, John son of Robin, or one of the other ones? Oh, John Robinson? OK, I’m on it.”
This is why “Farmer” isn’t an especially common English surname, despite the fact that 90% of the population used to be Farmers. Calling someone John Farmer doesn’t distinguish him from all the other John Farmers, unlike John the miller, John the baker, John the tailor, John the carter, John the cooper, or John the smith.
The most common surname in France is “Martin,” with “Bernard” close behind.
In French-speaking Quebec, however, it’s “Tremblay,” with Gagnon, Roy, Cote and Gauthier rounding out the top five. NONE are especially common in France - in fact,** there is virtually no correlation at all between popular Quebec and French surnames.**
I would assume this is because New France was populated by French settlers drawn from a group of French citizens not representative of modern French demographics or name popularity. After the UK conquered Canada in the Seven Years War, the population of New France was largely cut off from continued French immigration, and has grown and developed separately.
A name I constantly see is “Nguyen”, so I looked it up and found this via Google:
I’d say it’s because France has a lot more surnames than Quebec. Most popular Quebec surnames wouldn’t be out of place in France, but they’re not as common there because there are just more surnames in general. In fact, the most popular name in France, Martin, given to 0.3% of babies born from 1966 to 1990, is nearly as common in Quebec, but that only places it in 34th position there. (I got this interesting factoid from this report (pdf file) from the Institut de la statistique du Québec, on page 15.)
There are also some surnames that were created in Quebec. An interesting case is the name Phaneuf, which isn’t especially common, but not unheard of either. It can be traced back to one Matthias Farnsworth, born in Massachusetts, kidnapped by Indians as a teenager, and brought to the Montreal region. There he was freed, and since the Canadians didn’t know how to spell Farnsworth, his name became first Farneth or Fanef and was eventually standardized to Phaneuf. All the Phaneufs in Quebec, as well as the rest of North America and the world, trace their lineage to this man. History of the Phaneuf family.