One good thing about it: if you’re in a crowded room and somebody hollers out your name you’ll know they mean you.
I looked up my mother’s husband’s name (he was from Turku, Finland), and it’s not on either list.
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My paternal grandfather’s line of fathers got the name in Hungary, although the name itself is an ethnicity that is not Hungarian. I’m not sure how long we’ve carried the name.
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My paternal grandfather was the first in my family to have the name here, so I’m third generation on my father’s side.
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It’s on the list between 3230 and 3240. 0.004% of the population has the same last name as me.
Hell, look at Rodriguez.
Heh heh, try Smith. All but five states show bright red.
Try Fontenot. And Landry.
For the heck of it, I looked up my mother’s maiden name.
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It’s English
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My sister has traced an ancestor back to Vermont circa the Revolutionary War.
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It’s just over 300 on the list.
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- Scottish
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- Two. My dad moved here from Scotland.
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- Less than 50 on your list.
I don’t know for sure where my name originated, but the ancestor who brought it to the US was German, and it does seem to be a German name.
The ancester in question was about 5 generations ago. We have his passport for when he came from Germany to the US.
My name ranks between 3500 and 4000 on the linked frequency list.
1) 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.)
India being one of the cradles of civilization, my last name appeared there first of all. And it is an old brahmin Sanskrit name, many generations of Brahmins have had it.
2) If you know, or can make a reasonable guess, how many generations of ancestors with your surname have lived in your present country?
Presumably you mean my ancestors. Because many people in the States have my last name, but none of them are related to me - all my family is overseas. And I am technically first generation here, though neither my parents nor I were born here.
3) Roughly where does your surname appear on a Surname Frequency list? (such as THIS ONE).
Gah. It doesn’t appear on that list. That seems to be all Western names. On another I found it’s less than 1 in 10,000 all over the States. But that’s all I can find. Seems like every surname frequency list has only European/Western names.
Makes me sad, because I can’t play properly!
I don’t understand it entirely, so I am posting the results here:
%FREQ
0.000
CUMM FREQ
88.157
RANK
66041
For my name.
My Married Name
- English
- Short answer: Three generations have lived here.
Long answer: My father-in-law was brought here (to Australia, from England) as a baby in the 1950s. As my husband was born overseas, technically any children we have might be considered the first Australian-born (but not the first Australian) bearers of the surname in their direct line, but three generations have lived here. - Top 2900.
My Maiden Name
- English
- Short answer: Fifth generation to live here.
Long answer: We’ve been here since the 1830s. Talk about your large generation gaps; we only managed to have two generations born in the 19th century - my great great grandfather was born around 1813; he was an old man when he remarried and so my great grandfather wasn’t born until 1883 (when his father was 70!). We managed to spawn three generations in the 20th century and now we’re resting. - Top 50
Isn’t it funny how we have 150 years headstart on my in-law’s family, but they are just two generations behind us!
I checked out my last name and my mother’s maiden name on the surname distribution map. Mine is a map in varying shades of blue and green–I think they are all accounted for. Mom’s maiden name is a map in uniform deepest blue, except Wyoming, which is one shade lighter-- kind of funny. A quick look at the surname distribution list tells me that Mom’s maiden name is in the 64,000 range. Which amuses me because I never thought of it as being that rare–I mean I’ve got oodles of relations with it.
OK, so they are small oodles, and I don’t know (offhand) of anyone with the same spelling who isn’t related to me at least slightly, but it’s still kind of funny.
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I have the most common surname and have no idea where we got it.
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6 in my family that I know of.
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US Census rank 1.
My mom’s maiden name:
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I have no idea.
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4 that I know of.
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US Census rank 2320.
I don’t know that much about the older generations of my family.
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The origin is Irish, but there is also Scottish variation that is less common.
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I’m not sure of the number of generations, but my paternal family has been here since at least the early 1800’s. My maternal family has been here since the mid 1700’s.
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Between 400 and 450.
Mine’s a fairly generic Norman/Saxon hybrid - and is also a very common British placename, and so has no particular local connection to any one place. Ranks in the low hundreds on the US census (anyone have a similar ranking which isn’t solely US-based?)
The name I was born with: around the 1,700 mark on the US Census
My adopted name: around 22,000 mark.
Since I go by the name I was born with, I’ll use that one to answer the OP’s questions.
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The origin is Italian. It’s prevalent across Italy, not confined to one specific area.
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I’ve never really traced it, but I’d say more than 4, as I’ve met my great-great-grandmother, who was born in America.
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Mine is British, evidently tracing back to Cambridgeshire, England.
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Unfortunately my surname is also a common word in the English language (it’s the name of a month) which makes trying to search Canadian census information nearly impossible, so I don’t know the answer.
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Between 2900 and 3000.
I have a pretty unusual surname.
1) 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.)
I believe it’s Czechoslovakian. Or somewhere around there.
2) If you know, or can make a reasonable guess, how many generations of ancestors with your surname have lived in your present country?
I’m guessing I’m third generation from what I’ve been able to gather.
3) Roughly where does your surname appear on a Surname Frequency list? (such as THIS ONE).
It doesn’t appear on any list.
Oddly, I was never able to find anyone, anywhere, with the same last name as mine. Growing up, I would look throught the phone books of everywhere I had ever lived, or visited, and never saw anyone else with that name. This included checks of the largest of US cities. Imagine my surprise when I was stationed in the tiny town of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, about 15 years ago, and discovered dozens of different entries in the phone book with my last name. Turns out, Wisconisn is full of them. We all trace our roots through the same family that emigrated to the US about 3 generations ago.
Even stranger: About two years ago, on a flight from San Francisco to Chicago, it turned out that I had been assigned the exact same seat as someone else. As the other passenger and I tried to figure out who was in error, we compared tickets and noticed something unusual: Same last name. And where was he headed? Manitowoc, Wisconisin - about 5 miles from Two Rivers. Obviously, we were related somehow but didn’t have much time to hash it all out as the flight attendant was trying to find another seat for me, so we could take off. My final destination was Portland, Maine, and my luggage, quite predictably, ended up in Milwaukee.
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It’s Upper German- the ancestors came from Switzerland, but it is found in southern Germany as well.
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Five generations, only three of which were born here.
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It isn’t a common name, but it isn’t a rare name, either.