English Family Names
Of the top ten family names in the United States, eight have English origins or having possible mixed British Isles heritage, the other two being of Spanish origin. This is the first time two surnames of non-British Isles origin have been in the top 10 most common family names. Many African Americans have their origins in slavery (i.e. slave name). Many of them came to bear the surnames of their former owners. Many freed slaves either created family names themselves or adopted the name of their former master. According to 2000 U.S. Census data, the top ten surnames in the United States are: In the last UK Census in 2001, surnames in England can be compared to the United States with 6 of the family names in England being in both their top ten. Many English surnames are also found in Ireland. This is attributable to a number of factors, including the Protestant Plantation of Ireland, as well as the imposition of the Penal Laws in the Middle Ages, which forced many Irish people to Anglicize their surnames. Also, in the 9th century, Viking invaders brought many Norse names to Ireland that they had already brought to England when they established and settled the Danelaw. Although some Scandinavian names may have been brought to England in pre-Viking times, especially in the North and East (who says?). Moreover, the Anglo-Normans who invaded Ireland in the 1170s brought many Norman French names which they had already spread to England (again .
| Name | Rank - 2000 | Number | Country of Origin | England - 2001 |
| Smith | 1 | 2,376,207 | England, Ireland, Scotland | Smith |
| Johnson | 2 | 1,857,160 | England | Jones |
| Williams | 3 | 1,534,042 | England, Wales | Taylor |
| Brown | 4 | 1,380,145 | England, Ireland, Scotland | Brown |
| Jones | 5 | 1,362,755 | England, Wales | Williams |
| Miller | 6 | 1,127,803 | England, Scotland, Germany, France | Wilson |
| Davis | 7 | 1,072,335 | England, Wales | Johnson |
| García | 8 | 858,289 | Spain | Davies |
| Rodríguez | 9 | 804,240 | Spain | Robinson |
| Wilson | 10 | 783,051 | England, Scotland | Wright |
Read more about this topic: English American
Famous quotes containing the words english, family and/or names:
“Chaucer’s remarkably trustful and affectionate character appears in his familiar, yet innocent and reverent, manner of speaking of his God. He comes into his thought without any false reverence, and with no more parade than the zephyr to his ear.... There is less love and simple, practical trust in Shakespeare and Milton. How rarely in our English tongue do we find expressed any affection for God! Herbert almost alone expresses it, “Ah, my dear God!””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We all of us waited for him to die. The family sent him a cheque every month, and hoped he’d get on with it quietly, without too much vulgar fuss.”
—John Osborne (b. 1929)
“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for all the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)