Most popular family names

Family names can be unique or come in large numbers. In different countries some names are the most popular. Here is the listing (alphabetical by country names):

• Australia
  • Dundee?

• China (based on statistics published in 姓氏人名用字分析統計 Beijing, PRC, 1990)

Chinese family names come in large numbers. In the 1990 study, the top 200 family names accounted for over 96% of the random sample of 174,900 persons, over 500 other names accounted for the remainder. The sample was taken from 1982 census data.

1. (王) Wang2 (#1)
2. (陈) Chen2
3. (李) Li3
4. (张) Zhang1
5. (刘) Liu2
6. (杨) Yang2
7. (黄) Huang2
8. (吴) Wu2
9. (林) Lin2
10. (周) Zhou1
11. (叶) Ye4
12. (赵) Zhao4
13. (吕) Lu3
14. (徐) Xu2
15. (孙) Sun1
16. (朱) Zhu1
17. (高) Gao1
18. (马) Ma3
19. (梁) Liang2
20. (郭) Guo1

In a different study (1987) which combined data from mainland China and Taiwan (sample size of 570,000 persons), the outcome was a bit different. The number one Chinese family name was (李) Li3 at 7.9% of the sample, followed by (王) Wang2 at 7.4% and (张) Zhang1 at 7.1%, the study showed that the top 19 names covered 55.6% and the top 100 names covered 87% of the sample. Chinese family names distributed differently according to regions. The north was dominated by (李) Li3 (王) Wang2 (张) Zhang1 (刘) Liu2; the south was dominated by (陈) Chen2 (赵) Zhao4 (黄) Huang2 (林) Lin2 (吴) Wu2. There were over 450 family names in Beijing, but there were less than 300 family names in Guangdong and Fujian. Apparently the distribution of the statistics was significantly affected by the bias from the Taiwanese data.

• France
  • Noir
  • Blanc

• Germany
  • Müller
  • Schwarz

• Great Britain
  • Smith
  • Black

• Ireland (top 20[1])

1. Murphy (#1)
2. Kelly
3. O'Sullivan
4. Walsh
5. Smith
6. O'Brien
7. Byrne
8. Ryan
9. O'Connor
10. O'Neill
11. O'Reilly
12. Doyle
13. McCarthy?
14. Gallagher
15. O'Doherty
16. Kennedy
17. Lynch
18. Murray
19. Quinn
20. Moore

• Italy
  • ???
  • ???

• Poland
  • Kowalski
  • Nowak

• Russia
  • Tscherkasov
  • Dougorookiy

• Sweden
  • Johanson

• United States - see [Census data] (Numbers in parenthesis are percentage of population with that name.)

1. Smith (1.006%, #1)
2. Johnson (0.810%)
3. Williams (0.699%)
4. Jones (0.621%)
5. Brown (0.621%)
6. Davis (0.480%)
7. Miller (0.424%)
8. Wilson (0.339%)
9. Moore (0.312%)
10. Taylor (0.311%)
11. Anderson (0.311%)
12. Thomas (0.311%)
13. Jackson (0.310%)
14. White (0.279%)
15. Harris (0.275%)
16. Martin (0.273%)
17. Thompson (0.269%)
18. Garcia (0.254%)
19. Martinez (0.234%)
20. Robinson (0.233%)

• The Netherlands
  • Jansen, Jansens, Janssen, Janssens
  • De Vries
  • Smit
  • De Boer

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