Introduction to American surnames

1. The ranking order of the top ten American surnames is: Smith, Johnson, William, Brown, Jones, Miller, Davis, Marthinsen, Anderson and Wilson. Smith ranks first, with more than 2 million people in the United States.

2. Because the United States is a complex country after immigration, there are different reasons for the origin of surnames. For example, the name Smith, who ranks first, comes from the ancestral profession-blacksmith. The second-ranked {Johnson comes from the name of the previous generation, such as John, who is John's son.

3. According to American scholar Elsden Smith's investigation on the ins and outs of American surnames in his monograph American Surnames, there are roughly four sources of British and American surnames:

4. From the father's (or ancestor's) name, the surname evolved from the father's (or ancestor's) name, such as John's son Johnson and Richard's son Richardson.

5. Surnames come from topography and topography. Like wood and Churchill. This kind of surname is the most, accounting for about 40% of the total number of British and American surnames.

6, from the nickname. Some ancestors had certain physiological characteristics and gave their families a surname. Such as brown, black, long and so on.

7. Formed by ancestors. Such as Smith (blacksmith), baker (baker), fisherman (fisherman), farmer (farmer), Taylor (tailor) and so on.

Of course, the above four categories all refer to the surnames of Anglo-Saxon Americans, but do not include the surnames of immigrants such as Germany, France, Italy, western Russia, Japan and Arabia. If all of them are added together, according to Smith's estimation, there are about 6,543.8+0.5 million different surnames in the United States. According to Mr Heck (J N Hook), in the United States, there are more than 3,000 popular surnames with more than 1 10,000 people.