I’m not asking you to reveal your surname – but if you know its origin, as in which foreign country it first appeared in, can you identify that country (or countries)? (If you’re certain that the name originated in the country where you live now, please make that distinction.)
If you know, or can make a reasonable guess, how many generations of ancestors with your surname have lived in your present country?
Roughly where does your surname appear on a Surname Frequency list? (such as THIS ONE).
As an example, mine is either English, Irish or German; there have been at least 7 generations in the USA with my surname; and it ranks in the top 1500 on the linked list.
If you have additional questions about surnames, feel free to add to this thread’s questions.
My surname is Ukrainian in origin, in fact it’s the name of a mennonite settlement. I presume that’s where my ancestors came to the US from.
To the best of my knowledge, every single person with this last name is directly related to me. My great-grandparents emigrated here from the Ukraine, and my grandfather was the first generation to speak English. His parents never learned how, and since they came here with practically nothing we don’t know anything about their lives before they came to the US. Every instance of someone with our last name is either an aunt, uncle, or first cousin.
It doesn’t appear at all on that frequency list, and I would be shocked if it showed up on any lists anywhere. The settlement itself does not appear to exist in the Ukraine any more, so it is hard to find information.
My surname is from old England. It is the same as a southern England seaport where a battle took place about 940 years ago. A geneologist claims my family is a direct descendent of William the Conqeror.
According to my paternal grandfather, our ancestors came to the US in the early 1700’s. They settled in the southeast Pennsylvania area and many are still there today. It could be 15 to 20 generations now.
The oldest ancestor I can be pretty sure about came to the USA in the late 1700’s or early 1800’s, and he’s only 7 generations ago. All I can say is your folks must have kids early to have double the generations as ours.
Does anybody know if there’s a “standard number” of years in a “generation”? I’ve always assumed 25 years, on average, or four per century.
My father was 28 when I was born. My oldest came when I was 22. My daughter’s firstborn came when she was 21. In my case, four generations were born in the 1900’s. If one of my grandchildren were to have a child before 2013 (possible) that would make 5 generations in the same 100-year period.
Does anybody here have five or more generations in the same 100-year span?
The family’s first ancestor to set foot on what is now the U.S. was on the Mayflower, but he did not have our surname. I’m not recalling when the surname did first appear in the U.S. within our family line.
Between 250 and 300 in the list that was linked to.
4 Generations. My Great Grandfather came to the US in 1909
How far back my surname goes is a bit tricky. In Norway (and other Scandinavian countries) until the mid- to late- 19th century the family’s surname would change at each generation. A man’s children would have the surname of his first name with either -sen (son) or -dottir (daughter) tacked on the end. So Sven Olesen’s children would have the surname of Svensen or Svensdottir. In other words, each generation would have a different surname.
I do know that my surname has remained unchanged in each generation since my Great-Great Grandfather so that’s 6 generations.
The first person in my family in this country with my name is me. The first person with my surname to live in America was my father.
On the US census list, it ranks between 50,000 and 55,000. In Japan, my wife and I (not to mention our kid in a couple of couple of weeks) may well be the only ones.
3.) Not on that list in any variant. Speculatively, pretty far down as I’ve run across relatively few. There is one couple by that name other than me in my local phone book, so it’s not vanishingly rare. But fairly uncommon.
The name search file at the U.S. Census Bureau might be easier to use than the one the OP linked to. Just type your surname into their search engine and the info comes right up.
Finnish
My ancestors came here from Finland. I’m in the second or third generation born here. I’ll have to ask my Dad again to be sure.
I feel sure I have posted this link: U.S. Surname Distribution before in another thread. But if you’re in the USA you might enjoy playing around with it to see where your surname is popular – and not.