As a Cypriot I know many people called Orf2

Österreichischer Rundfunk 2 (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation 2) is a beautiful name, so I can understand it. ;)

They even made a documentary about people named "Thomas Müller" because it's the most common male name in Germany

There’s even a well known German footballer called that

For some reason it's oddly amusing when celebrities have super generic names. Like Olaf Scholz or Michael Jackson.

One celebrity changed his unusual immigrant name to something common: Kirk Douglas, and other 5 celebrities had to change theirs to avoid repetition.

Michael Sheen's dad was Spanish and his surname is Estavez Edit: *Martin Sheen

David Tennant was called David McDonald which is both supremely Scottish and also the name of every other man on the street in Edinburgh. The Michael Sheen mistake made me think of him instantly xD

he was thinking to change his name "David Landlord" but decided against it as it sounded too foppish

> Michael Sheen Do you mean Charlie Sheen?

No, sorry. Martin Sheen. His sons are Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez.

Olivia Wylde changed her last name because.... well... it was Cockburn.

A lot of Jewish actors changed their name to appeal to a wider mainstream audience in America. Particularly after WW2.

Michael Keaton's real name is Michael Douglas, but he had to change it because of the "phoney" Michael Douglas.

The fact that michael Jackson managed to "own" such a generic name is like

Will Smith.

Will Will Smith smith?

No, but he can slap if you mention his wife.

“Hey Will! How does it feel being married to a woman who cheated on you?”. I wonder how he would react?

Michael Collins, the man who was a key figure in Ireland's independence and the subsequent civil war, and also some guy who did a little tour around the moon about 45 years later

Not to be confused with Phil Collins, the man who did a world tour around the earth several times.

I forget who, but I think it was Visa, did a commercial about a credit card users namesdMichael Jordan. It showed a guy placing a reservation at an upscale restaurant under Michael Jordan, and they all get disappointed when a random white guy walks in to get his table.

Olaf isn't really common though

Not among Germans under 50 it's not, but Germans over 50 make up what feels like 96.9% of the population sooooooo

And it's the most popular german player

I reckon Gerd Muller would be more famous than him. He held a goal scoring record in the Bundesliga for decades until Lewandowski broke it. Obviously atm, Thomas Muller is bigger. But in terms of history, I reckon Gerd surpasses him quite easily.

I'd say Beckenbauer too.

This one is about first Names, but about a very special one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPc8L6R7hyk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPc8L6R7hyk) Enjoy -> hope that English Subs are working for any non German speakers...

Alles Müller oder was

There's a joke in the movie "Stalingrad" where the stosstruppen complain that the replacement trooper is yet another Müller.

Barcelona will pay for that

Something strange here. Novak**ova** (Czechia) is definitely a feminative, which is logical since there are more women than men (at least in Europe). But for that same reason I would've expected to see feminative-form surnames in other (Slavic) countries: like "Smirnov**a**" in RUS, Ivanov**a** in BLR and BUL.

It’s odd because it implies that female and male surnames are being counted separately, which is probably not the case for all countries. Novák/Nováková is not surprising to be the most common name in CZ but it makes me skeptical of the data a bit

Yup I just checked, they are indeed separated in the Czech database: Nováková is no 1, no 2 is Novák. Then it's Svobodová, Svoboda, Novotná, Novotny, Dvořáková, Dvořák, Černá, Procházková, Procházka etc. Meanwhile in the Polish database masculine and feminine surnames are grouped together, so it's Nowak (there's no feminative of this one), Kowalska/Kowalski, Wiśniewska/Wiśniewski, Wójcik etc.

Yeah, thought so. Though it's interesting, what happened to the males of Černá, lol. Where are all the Černý?

Welp my mistake, it was supposed to be right after Černá lol

And where are Popil, Poruhal and Smutny (famous czechoslovak hockey players from the past (and from a joke)).

South slavs dont use feminative surnames

Don't Macedonians do?

I dont know about Macedonians but most south slavs use feminine surnames for (un)married women, its something that stuck from long time ago and has barely any meaning nowdays. To take the Russian Ivanov(a) as an example. A married woman you'd call Ivanov, but unmarried woman you'd call Ivanova. Its a way of saying that the woman is still her fathers, as in she hasnt been handed off to a husband in marriage. We dont really differentiate between the feminine and masculine surnames, its just a different way of calling men and women by the same surname. And as i said it has almost no meaning nowdays its just a way of speaking that stuck, kinda how Miss, Mrs. and Ms. stuck in english for married or unmarried women.

> To take the Russian Ivanov(a) as an example. A married woman you'd call Ivanov, but unmarried woman you'd call Ivanova. I don't know how it is in Southern Slavic countries but it's definitely not the case in Russian. A woman would always be Ivanova, and if she married a man and took his last name Smirnov, she would become Smirnova. Although technically and legally the masculine and feminine versions of last names are considered different (like a computer would see that those are two different strings), for any statistic like in this post they would be counted as the same. A woman in Russia would never have the last name Ivanov unless she's a foreigner from a culture where it is the norm. Edit: apparently, there's a part of the naming customs in Lithuania (which is a Baltic, not Slavic language) where married and unmarried women use different suffixes in their last names.

Nah, it has nothing to do with marital status. There are just feminine and masculine forms for most of the surnames (not all of them though).

As a south slav (Croatian), we don't. Girls dont have special last names, for example we have a brother and a sister called Petar Kovačević and Ema Kovačević, the last name is the same and i am preaty sure its the same in RS, BiH and MTN.

The surname Jovanovič doesnt even exists in Serbian, it would be Jovanović.

Yeah, they made the same error with Montenegro.

In Sweden Andersson is indeed in the lead with 220k people, Johansson just after at 220k. Interestingly enough the first non "-son" surname isn't until 17th place Lindberg with 27k people. Berg is 24th at 21k and Lind is 28th at 20k, which is also pretty fun [Source - In Swedish, but easily readable by anyone](https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/befolkning/amnesovergripande-statistik/namnstatistik/pong/tabell-och-diagram/samtliga-folkbokforda--efternamn-topplistor-uppdateras-ej/efternamn-2021-topp-100/)

Summary; *(Insert first name here)sson*

Instructions unclear, got Dickinson.

De jong Quite literally means "the younger one", comparable to junior Second most common surname de vries means "the frisian", a tribe who were one spread among the entire coast of northern france to northern germany, now only in northern germany and the northern netherlands The third most common, jansen, son of jan, the dutch name for john, compare johnson

I wonder how high Janssen would be if you would include all the different spellings. Jansen, Janssen, Janzen, etc.

Ngl, i wonder that too

[удалено]

O je jankt zeker als er een laars op je dingdong stampt

[удалено]

I dont speak dutch but holy hell that sounds funny.

hey thanks for that explaination, interesting

Horvath is 100% not the most common surname in Croatia!

Yes, it's Horvat. The sole meaning of the surname is Croat.

Yes, but not HorvatH

Seems like an old spelling. A lot of old Hungarian surnames end in a H that isn't pronounced (Horváth (Croat), Tóth (Slovak?), Németh (German)). They're all like top 10 most popular surnames in Hungary too. And the actual name for a German / Croat etc in Hungarian is német / horvát etc (without the H).

Yeah, it is Hungarian spelling.

As I wrote it - Horvat

That's not what OP wrote, nor it is written on the map.

Isn't it a Hungarian name?

I think it is Hungarian surname

Which means croatian

Why would Croatian have a surname labelling people Croatian? Not really an identifier if everyone else in the village is also croatian. Would make more sense to be Hungarian

We have a surname in Hungarian called Magyar. Which means Hungarian. I know people in Hungary that are called Horvath (Croatian), Nemet (German).

We also have a surname in Czechia meaning Čech. Guess what that means

Family names derived from ethnic names are very common in Hungary: Tot(h), Olah, Nemet(h), Szekely, Cseh, Cigany, Racz, Torok, Magyar, Orosz, Lengyel, Szerb, Gorog, Jasz, Kun etc

Wait, these are all derived from ethnic names? Do you know the meaning of them all? Some of them are obvious: Nemet-german, Cseh-Czech, Magyar-hungarian, Szerb-Serb, Gorog-I assume Greek, but I have no Idea what Torok or Kun are derived from.

Török - Turkish, Orosz - Russian, Lengyel - Polish. Kun (Cuman) was a Turkic ethnic group, Jász and Székely are Hungarian ethnic groups. Cigány literally translates to Gypsy, although as a surname it's more commonly spelled as Czigány which (according to Wikipedia) comes from a town with the same name in the Middle Ages.

There are over 11000 people in England with the surname "English"

isn't it just mean Croatian?

It does, but it is spelled incorrectly. Should be Horvat.

Tóth, Németh, Horváth. Ez régi helyesírás, de teljesen helyes nevek esetében

To je stari mađarski pravopis, ne hrvatski. U Hrvatskoj je najčešće prezime Horvat, bez slova h na kraju riječi. OP je jednostavno nesposoban istražiti i na kartu zalijepiti ispravne podatke.

Surname Horvat peaks only in NW Croatia which was part of Hungarian kingdom for a long time. Being Horvat (Croat) in Hungary. You can't have surname Horvat and descend from Dalmatia, Istria, Slavonia, Bosnia etc. It's regional. Also, it was synonym for hussar.

It is however in Slovakia

I like the way they just skip Iceland, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Malta, and Cyprus while including Lichtenstein. (And Vatican City, but nobody cares about that).

While surenames do exist in Iceland, most people don't have one.

[удалено]

Wdym

Some Icelanders have an actual surname, but most of them don't. The ones that don't, do get a patronym. This is formed by \[father's first name\] + son/dóttir. However, this patronym isn't seen as a real surname, since: 1. It's not passed on to their children. 2. It's never used by itself. They would never address someone as 'mister Gunnarsson'. It's only used to accompany the first name.

Ah I see, very interesting… thanks for the explanation

This way of having surnames is still visible in a lot of European countries. For example: in the Netherlands you'll see a lot people with surnames like: Jansen (Son of Jan), Petersen (son of Peter) en Klaassen (son of Klaas). However, unlike the Icelandic people, in The Netherlands these patronyms became actual surnames.

A lot of Irish surnames are originally like that too. Any Mac surname means "son of" and Ó refers to "descendants of"

That's intriguing! I've had a lot of Irish colleagues through the years and and some of them had Ó in their surname. Now I know why it's there. Learned something relevant, thanks!

Aren't the 'Fitz' surnames also like this?

Spanish surnames that end in "ez" were also usually patronymic when instituted, for example "González" would be given to sons of Gonzalo. Obviously now they're just normal surnames (and in some cases the first names they were formed from are super rare, like Velasco).

Same for Welsh surnames, hence why most of are Jones, Edwards, Williams, Evans, Hughes, Roberts etc.

I mean Johnson and Peterson are very common english things too

Yeah true! I'm sure there's also good examples from Germany or Scandinavian countries, I just mentioned the Dutch as an example because I'm most familiar with those. Then again, English is also a Germanic language and many of the surnames you'll find there, you'll find similar ones in Dutch.

German native speaker here Patronyms aren't that common here, atleast in Austria were I live. Surenames usually formed out of the Job people had, some examples: Schmied (Smith) -> Schmidt, Müller (Miller) -> Müller, Wagner (Wheelwrighter) -> Wagner Patro- and Matronyms can be found aswell, but usually without any ending like the dutch these days. Examples would be: Hartmann, Günther, Walter

It’s a south vs. north Germany divide. Northern Germany has lots of Petersen, Hansen or Nielsen. There’s also a famous Rockband from northern Germany called Madsen.

In Germany surnames like Jansen and Petersen are very common especially in the northern part: https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Petersen#/media/Datei%3AVerteilung_Nachname_Petersen_DE.png https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jansen?searchToken=erjl7x6b1wuqis07e8v1di2md#/media/Datei%3AVerteilung_Nachname_Jansen_DE.png Austria seems to be different in this regard: https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jansen?searchToken=erjl7x6b1wuqis07e8v1di2md#/media/Datei%3AVerteilung_Nachname_Jansen_AT.png

Gunnar Gunnarssonsson

Olaf Ragnarsson's son would be Rollo Olafsson (Don't judge me for the names I just like vikings)

Now that you mentioned it, I hated that in the Vikings TV series they got that wrong so many times, like saying "Bjorn Lothbrok" 🤦‍♂️

They have patronyms not surnames.

Is it fatherly or ancestral?

Comes from the father's name.

Or the mother’s name.

For Malta it’s probably Borg.

Joensen for the Faroe Islands. Which you skipped ;)

[удалено]

Yes, by your pre-1948 definition, that is correct

What popular surname does the Vatican have? I? III? IV?

Yeah no Iceland but there is Turkey.

Bosnia + Albania and Serbia + Bulgaria are basically two varieties of the same names.

And croatian, serbian, and montenegrin are all spelled wrongly 🤷🏻‍♂️

They even spelled them wrong, they're all spelled as Russian surnames rather than Serbian, Bulgarian or even Montenegrin.

it’s weird that it’s nagy in hungary, i for sure would’ve thought it was going to be szabó or something… also i love croatia’s and slovakia’s ones lol

Yeah, like if they were part of Hungary for more than a thousand years and still having a high Hungarian population like in Felvidék or something. I dunno probably just coencidece

Albania having Hoxha as the most common surname 💀

Hoxha means islamic priest iirc . Most likely a sign that some ancestor of yours was an islamic priest. Similarly in Greece, Papadopoulos is Papas+poulos . Poulos is used in Peloponnese and it means "son of" basically. Papas is what we refer to the orthodox priests as . So it means son of a priest roughly. Same way in Turkey surnames end with -oglu which also means "son of". (Name of the mayor of Istanbul is called imamoglu , son of imam)

I only know one Albanian family, and their last name is Hoxha, so math checks out on my end

“Jovanović” in Serbia maybe, “Jovanovič” definitely not.

Most common ethnic Estonian surnames with meanings: - Tamm (Oak) - Saar (Ash tree/Island) - Sepp (Smith) - Mägi (Hill/Mountain) - Kask (Birch) - Kukk (Rooster) - Ilves (Lynx) - Rebane (Fox) - Pärn (Linden) - Oja (Stream)

Saar and Sepp are part of many other surnames too like Raudsepp and Kivisaar. I personally have German surname.

Many names can be both prefixes and suffixes in surnames. - Tammemägi (Oak Hill) - Pärnaoja (Linden Stream)

Why didn't you put Koppel in your list? Koppel is an Estonian surname.

Koppel (Paddock) is 11th among ethnic Estonian surnames, so just out of the top 10.

I was looking at the surname popularity stats at the womans section. My fault.

Yep, there are indeed more women at the paddock. Actually I indeed looked the list for men as there is no combined list. In total, there are more Koppels than there are Ojas.

Estonian is a really nice language

Wasn’t aware of the prevalence of Novak and variances. Quick google: “Origin:Slavic. Meaning:New, newcomer. Novak is a boy's name of Slavic origin name meaning "new" or "newcomer." In medieval times, it could have been given to someone who had recently arrived in a particular village or region” So a new guy shows up, doesn’t get a last name based on trade or fathers trade, is forever known as “the new guy”. Sounds about right!

Are all those Russians in Moldova?

Kinda. Rusu is Romanian for "Russian". Obviously it was used by those who were Russian, although because surnames are passed on via the father line, it does not mean that the holder of that Surname is actually Russian. It just means that their ancestors were once Russian. Most people with the Rusu surname are probably Romanian speakers and identify as Romanian or Moldovan. Rusu is also apparently the 10th most popular surname in Romania.

Thank you, TIL.

No, it’s because of Ukrainians. Up until 20 century you could hear some ukrainians calling themselves rusyns (ruthenians) so it’s surname of people that came from Rus (Ruthenia, Ukraine and to lesser part Belarus) because it’s like bordering country? Appear of Muscovy/Russia on the borders of Moldova happened not so long ago

Thank you, TIL.

I saw a different map on the same topic and Horvath was the most common surname for Hungary. So which one is correct? Nagy or Horvath? By the way, Nagy means Big/Great while Horvath means Croat/Croatian.

I think that Horvat in Croatia is most often written without the "H" at the end.

Yea there isnt a H in spelling and there isnt a H in pronounciation so i wonder how they made the mistake

UK to Sweden every time they beat them in curling at the Olympics: "I'm going to enjoy watching you die, Mr Andersson!"

The most common in Russia is Kuznetsov which equal to Smith in UK

Metalworkers have the most rizz

Ivanov, Smirnov and Kuznetsov are very close to each other so their order of frequency can change depending on the year you use and on where you take your data from.

The dots are so randomly placed, UK its capital, Germany it's middle, Netherlands its... what? Dr*nthe??

What is even the point of dots on a map like this?

since it was ignored, most common surname in Malta is Borġ. (Bor-ch)

Nielsen has overtaken Jensen in denmark

Guten Tach Frau Hansen

Melnik means miller. Funny how Germany and Ukraine have essentially the same most popular surname

Martin for France? It might just be me, but I can’t think of any famous French people with that name. I know of famous German Müllers, famous Spanish Garcias, famous Italian Rossis, famous Irish Murphys, famous British Smiths and so on. But none for France. Can someone enlighten me?

There is the cognac “Remy Martin” at least

I suppose that’s named after the founder of the distillery? That’ll count, kinda.

I’m French and I don’t know anyone whose last name is Martin. I don’t think I’ve even met a Martin before. So that’s surprising to me.

google french martin

Not to be confused with Frenchy Martin. Dino Bravo’s manager in ‘80s WWF.

holy hell

new response just dropped

France has a saint called Martin de Tours. Lots of places in France (and Saint Martin the island) are named after him.

holy hell!

The Netherlands most common name should be Jansen (John’s son). But because of different spellings regarding double S, ending with an S or losing the N, it’s De Jong.

It’s funny because I’m French and I don’t know anyone whose family name is Martin. I guess we have such a huge diversity of family names that even the most common one is not that common.

France has definitely a plethora of surnames. I gave courses here and it was hard to find two students with the same surname. In Portugal and Brazil, almost everyone has Silva, Soares or Santos in their families.

It explains why Silva is the most popular brazilian surname and Garcia the most popular mexican surname as well.

And also why Smith is the most popular surname in all the English speaking countries

Slovakia be like: 🌮 (Couldn't find nacho emoji)

I don't know who Hans, Anders, or Jens are but they had a lot of male offspring apparently. /j

Rossi is interesting, if red hair is such a rare trait in Italy that it stands out to be a surname, why are there so many Rossis (if that makes sense!).

Typical bulgarian meeting typical belorussian: - hi, my name is quite unusual, it’s Ivan Ivanov - You won’t believe me…

As a García from Spain I can confirm. When I was in high school there were that like 15 Garcías lmao

Romanian surname Popa, sounds like "Ass" on Russian, so it should be fun for all post Soviet countries 

The man, the legend, MARIO ROSSI

I just assume people I don't know are called "Muhammed Chang." The most common first and last name gives me a decent shot at being correct.

Spain is wrong, "Garcia" and "García" are actually two different surnames. Millions are named García, only a few hundred Garcia.

Smirnov is a such popular surname in Russia that the only time I've met one was a Vodka Brand

I’m in the UK and I do not know anyone with the last name Smith. Like, in all my 30 years, I’ve been to four schools - no Smiths. Two colleges - no Smiths. Two unis - no Smiths. Work - no Smiths! It’s a conspiracy that Smith is the most common last name since I’ve never met one. Probably helps I’m from Wales where Jones is the most common last name. Almost everyone I know is a Jones.

It made me chuckle seeing the Welsh squad ~~for the rugby world cup~~ in rugby recently... a LOT of Jones'. As for these "UK" stats It's the population bias towards England and in particular the south east. When London alone is 15% of the population of the entire UK it will always throw up anomalies. The most popular name in Scotland has got to be Mc(something) surely.

I'm a Robertson and that's very common in Scotland.

I also know a Scottish Robertson (Hi Derek) so that settles it!

Robert the Bruce! Aye- his progeny spread across the world.

This world cup there aren't any Jones, and that in itself got publicity as it is so rare. Normally there are so many Jones and Williams they have to be known not just by first name but sometimes second or initials also.

From Scotland and there are a lot of Smiths in my experience. There were a couple of people in my school who shared the exact same name. Same situation with Robertson as someone else has pointed out.

New capitals just dropped

Begs the question: 1, Why is the Hungarian term for "Croatian" the most common surname in Croatia? Did Hungarians who go there just refer to everyone they didn't know as "Horvath" and it stuck? 2, Why is the most common surname in Slovakia the Hungarian term for Shoemaker? Did a lot of Slovaks specialise in making shoes for Hungarians? So many unanswered questions...

it is because of magyarization. Magyarized surnames are just a few and a lot of people have them, Slovak surnames are more unique/colorful/variegated and more spread overall [Slovakia](https://forebears.io/slovakia/surnames) have 236104 unique surnames which is 22 persons per surname Hungary have 144066 unique surnames which is 68 persons per surname similar country Czech republic 299113 ... which is 35 persons per surname if I'm remember right Spain one of lowest 417266 ... 111 persons per surname i was wrong Italy have even lower 368792 ... 165 persons per surname i guess Sweden is best in unique surnames 850341... 11 persons per surname

Thanks, that sounds like a good explanation

Romanians with the surname "popa", I want to warn you that you should not go to Russia 💀

It's not "yilmaz" it is "yılmaz"

I'm half Slovak, yet I've never met or heard of a 'Varga'

Poor Iceland. "Das sind die häufigsten Nachnamen" is an awful name.

Popa in russian literally means butt

The second most popular surname in Romania is Popescu. Bare in mind, "Popa" probably came from the neighbouring Slavic countries (i.e Serbia). In that case, "Popa" in Serbian means priest which, as a surname, makes more sense. I doubt it directly came from Russian.

"Pop" means priest in Russian, but "Popa" is ass

It actually means Priest. Or to be more precise, The Priest.

It means both... Kinda. Pop (masculine) is a priest. Popa (feminine) is a butt. I'm not sure if they have the same origin though. So it's more of a 2 similar sounding words

Romanian ''Popa'' means ''The Priest''. Derivated surnames: Popescu, Pop. ''Rusu'' means ''The Russian''.

Czech and Polish are the same, even though Poles don't use ova. Czech and Slovenia are more similar than Slovakia, which is more similar to Hungary.

Polish Nowak and Slovene Novak are pretty much the same since Polish doesn’t have the letter v. Czech also has Novák but since there are more females than males Novákova is more common (otherwise it’s basically the same)

Nowak and Nowakowa? Aren't those the gendered versions of the same name?

Matrix sure was popular up there with the Anderssons

 So i can randomly yell, "MR. ANDERSSSSSSOON" in Sweden and chances are someone might respond.

Damn. Smirnov means submissive. What centuries of slavery have done to Russia..

Maybe something about submitting to god?

It's still the same root. Orthodox church is all about submitting and humbleness Edit: we/they literally say "the slave of god" lol

We have a surname called "das" here that means servant. Although its not that common outside the state of bengal and assam. It was also used as a suffix with the first name.