We are used to the fact that every person has a surname. And are there exceptions? Are there many surnames in the world? When and where did the very first appear? Which of them are the most popular all over the world and in individual countries? If you are interested in the answers to these questions, read about everything in order in the article.
Inheritance from ancestors is different
Now it is impossible to imagine a person without a surname. However, there are such people. For example, in Iceland people manage only with a personal name and patronymic (patronymic). And at the beginning of the XX century. in this country, even a law was issued prohibiting native Icelanders from having a surname. Since then, only foreigners or those with foreign roots have it. In addition, residents of the underdeveloped countries of Africa and Asia do not have surnames; nicknames are used there to distinguish them. In the rest of the world, people have long been accustomed to using generic names and cannot imagine their life without them. Over time, the most common and popular surnames stood out. And some, on the contrary, have become rare and outlandish.
Originally from antiquity
The origin of this specific generic name dates back to ancient Rome. The Latin word familia means "family" or "genus". In Russia, such self-names appeared in the XIV century. and gradually replaced personal nicknames. At anycountry, the first surnames were received by noble persons, and then the tradition passed to other classes, gradually reaching the lowest.
Reflecting the characteristics of a particular language and culture, there are many different surnames in the world. It is difficult to calculate how many of them there are in the world, but the most popular surnames can be distinguished. If you look at this rating, you get the impression: the shorter, the more popular. The top four lines are occupied by Asian generic names, because often popular surnames were formed from hieroglyphs.
Top five of the best
First place - Lee (Lee, Li, Ly). According to unofficial statistics, more than 100 million people in the world wear it. Most of them live in China, Vietnam and Korea, but there are many Europeans and Americans among them who inherited this generic name from some ancestor.
In second place in the ranking of "Most Popular Surnames" - Chang (Chang, Zhang). This Chinese surname appeared more than 4 thousand years ago, and during this time has become one of the most common in Asia and around the world. She has variants of Zhang and Chen.
Third place - Wang (or Wong, written in Latin Wang). Like many popular surnames, it originated in China. There is nothing surprising here, if we remember that about one and a half billion of the population of our planet are Chinese by nationality. And since there are only 450 Chinese surnames, it becomes clear why some of them are so often repeated.
Fourth place - Vietnamese surname Nguyen. It is so common that in Vietnam itself 40% of citizens wear it. This is hard to imagine in a European country.
The second top five of the best
The next three lines of the ranking were occupied by Spanish and Portuguese popular surnames.
Fifth place - Garcia. This Spanish surname is widely known. It is extremely popular in Spain itself, as well as in South America, Cuba and the Philippines.
Sixth place - Gonzalez (or Gonzalez). Another very common surname in the Hispanic world.
Seventh place - Hernandez. Formed in the 15th century, this generic name is now worn by residents of Spain, Chile, Mexico, the USA and some other countries.
The last three popular surnames in the global top ten come from English, Russian and German.
Eighth place - Smith. This is the most common surname in England, Australia and the USA. Translated into Russian, it means "blacksmith".
Many popular English surnames are associated with job titles. For example: Potter ("potter"), Miller ("miller"), Baker ("baker"), Cook ("cook"), Ward ("guard"), Butler ("butler"), etc. The names of paints were no less often the source from which came such popular English surnames as Brown ("brown"), White ("white"), Green ("green"), Gray ("gray"), Black ("black"), etc. e.
Ninth place - Smirnov. There are several versions of the originthis surname. According to one of them, it comes from the word "quiet", and according to the other - from the old Russian greeting: "With the new world!". Just like the British, popular surnames in Russia are often formed from the names of the first professions: Kuznetsov, Melnikov, Goncharov, Popov, Stolyarov.
Tenth place in the world ranking - Muller. This is also a “professional” generic name: in German it means “miller”. This surname is common in all countries speaking this language: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg.
Learning last names is a fun activity and also one of the ways to immerse yourself in the language and culture of a country.
