High Frequency Surnames


Vermeer Portrait England and Wales
Wales
Scotland

 

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England and Wales


Comparative Tables 1856-1996
Current Leading 500 Names

The first publication to analyse the relative frequency of leading surnames was the Sixteenth Annual Report
of the Registrar General of England and Wales, published in 1856. The following extracts raise questions
that even 150 years later have not been answered:-

'While it is obvious that the original adoption of a particular surname was the result in most cases of arbitrary circumstances - since, John Smith, instead of being called after his occupation, might equally have chanced to become John Johnson from his father's Christian name, or John Wood from the situation of his abode, or John Brown from his complexion ,- it is curious to remark the predominance of certain names , which seem to have been adopted preferentially by large numbers of the people, or conferred upon them by others, and now prevail in every county of England. Do these common names hold the same rank in point of numbers which they had at first, or have some of them spread and multiplied more than others? For instance, is the present predominance of the Smiths amongst English surnames due to the original numerical strength of that great family, or to some special circumstances acting upon the ordinary laws of increase, owing to which the descendants of the hammer-men have multiplied at a greater rate than the bearers of any other name? Has the progeny of the tawny Brown increased faster than that of the fair complexioned Whites, relatively to the original numbers of each race, so as to account for the excess of the former over the latter; or were the Browns in a majority in the first instance? Various are the surmises and speculations to which such questions may give rise.'

I will give his results further on, but here are his findings for three leading surnames:-

Smith Taylor Brown The figures for Taylor and Brown are incorrect in my source (0.67 and 0.51), and have been corrected here
1.36% 0.68% 0.57% My thanks to ME for pointing this out

In 1933, the then Registrar-General- S. P. Vivian conducted a similar survey on the same names.

  Smith Taylor Brown
1840/41 1.441% 0.712% 0.600%
1885/6 1.442% 0.702% 0.618%
1930/31 1.699% 0.651% 0.704%

The 1933 historical findings show a certain consistency , and the 1853 survey does not fit in easily with these. Between 1840 and 1885 did the relative frequency of the name Smith decline, and then rapidly recover, or is the 1853 methodology suspect?

Vivian-the 1933 Registrar General -concludes that :-

" if a surname increases faster than the general population, it must be at the cost of another surname, and vice-versa. There must be some reason for this which, given sufficient evidence, it might be possible to identify. There is, on the other hand , the law of probabilities... There is the possibility of differential fertility or mortality rates; although anything in the nature of selection in regard to physical characteristics must be ruled out in the case of large samples of the population distinguished from one another by little, if anything, but their surnames. The 1930-31 figures connote an actual Smith population of well over half a million and a population of Browns and Taylors a little above or below a quarter of a million each."

Another possibility is that any fluctuations are not real, but merely a reflection of the imperfections of the various sampling systems used

Since then, there have been various other counts on high-frequency surnames -as reported in Anthony Camp's 'The frequency of common surnames'. (Genealogists' Magazine, 1998)

However, with the above surveys, it is not clear what areas they covered - just England and Wales, or Great Britain, or the United Kingdom? So direct comparisons between the figures ought to be treated with caution

 

The next major development was a count of all the marriages registered in England and Wales from January to March 1975, by the human biologist, Gabriel Lasker. His results were published in a 1983 paper, and will be shown further on in this article.

The 1990's have seen the appearance of the U.K. electoral registers on CDROM. For those who could afford, or have access to it, this will result in an accurate count of those bearing the name. With the following provisos:-

And finally, 1999 saw the appearance of the 1881 Census on Cdrom, which allows a much faster method of retrieving levels of incidence. A quick count on 'Smith' and 'Brown' (restricted just to England and Wales) resulted in 1.4% for Smith and 0.84% for Brown. Compare this with the survey of the 1884/5 indices above.

Backtracking for a moment, Peter Christian has alerted me to his file from the March 1849 GRO marriage indexes, with soundex codes and frequency. This file is useful for measuring isonymy in 1849 (people marrying those with the same surname), but not for measuring the national frequency. For example, the Jones's have a marriage frequency that is twice what is normally expected, well above that of the Smiths.
As David Hey indicates, surveys should really be made just on death registrations, as birth registrations were seriously under-recorded (before the 1870's), and marriage registrations are affected by the frequency of isonymic marriages.


Wales

A modern-day survey has been conducted by Michael Williams, and the results tabulated in his 'Researching Local History' (1996)

The top hundred Welsh names in thousands, totalled from the 6 British telecom directories for Wales in 1986
1 Jones 60.57   51 Nicholls 0.99
2 Williams 37.81   52 Daniels 0.99
3 Davies 36.76   53 Nicholas 0.95
4 Evans 24.66   54 Preece 0.93
5 Thomas 22.97   55 Prosser 0.81
6 Roberts 17.14   56 Edmunds 0.79
7 Hughes 13.38   57 Wynne 0.75
8 Lewis 12.96   58 Gough/Goff 0.73
9 Morgan 11.70   59 Herbert 0.64
10 Griffiths 10.90   60 David 0.64
11 Edwards 10.33   61 Beynon 0.63
12 Owen 8.85   62 Arnold 0.56
13 James 7.66   63 Charles 0.55
14 Morris 7.50   64 Gittins 0.53
15 Price 7.50   65 Griffin 0.51
16 Rees 7.30   66 Rosser 0.50
17 Phillips 6.34   67 Mathias 0.48
18 Jenkins 6.23   68 Probert 0.45
19 Harris 5.79   69 Anthony 0.43
20 Lloyd 5.64   70 Gwilliam 0.40
21 Richards 5.51   71 Rickett/ard 0.37
22 Powell 4.72   72 Giles 0.36
23 Parry 4.49   73 Protheroe 0.35
24 John 3.65   74 Phelps 0.35
25 Watkins 3.39   75 Gwynne 0.32
26 Howells 3.25   76 Roderick 0.30
27 Pritchard 3.14   77 Bellis 0.29
28 Rogers 2.71   78 Meyrick 0.29
29 Matthews 2.37   79 Mansel 0.27
30 Rowlands 2.35   80 Rice 0.26
31 Humphreys 2.22   81 Trehaerne 0.25
32 Pugh 2.19   82 Michael 0.25
33 Ellis 2.17   83 Eynion 0.25
34 Bowen 2.17   84 Elias 0.24
35 Hopkins 2.14   85 Havard 0.24
36 Martin 1.91   86 Pullin 0.22
37 Bennett 1.86   87 Paul 0.21
38 Bevan 1.69   88 Abraham 0.21
39 Pearse 1.65   89 Cadwalidwr 0.19
40 Adams 1.61   90 Leyshon 0.19
41 Walters 1.59   91 Jarrett 0.18
42 Llewellyn 1.50   92 Picton 0.16
43 George 1.45   93 Gething 0.13
44 Simons 1.32   94 Gronow 0.12
45 Vaughan 1.31   95 Onions 0.12
46 Reynolds 1.25   96 Powys 0.12
47 Andrews 1.19   97 Craddock 0.12
48 Davis 1.17   98 Sayce 0.12
49 Meredith 1.07   99 Prytherch 0.12
50 Lawrence 1.02   100 Gwyther 0.10
The above is a headlist of 'Welsh' surnames -it excludes 'English' surnames like Smith. If Smith had been included, it would have been in 13th place, and Green 38th.In most cases, all variants of surnames are combined e.g. Pierce, Pearse,Pearce
The above table appears on page ( ) of Michael A Williams Researching local history -the human journey and is reproduced with kind permission of the author.
© Longman, 1996 -permission is currently being sought from the publisher as well

This may be compared with the detailed historical analysis in John and Sheila Rowlands 'The Surnames of Wales' (Federation of Family History Societies. 1996), pages 43-44. This findings are based on a comprehensive survey of all the surnames which were recorded in the marriage registers of all parishes in Wales for the period 1813-1837. The size of their sample is estimated at 30-40% of the potential population.

Surnames found throughout Wales, 1813-1837
1 Jones 13.84%   6 Roberts 3.69%
2 Williams 8.91%   7 Hughes 2.98%
3 Davies 7.09%   8 Lewis 2.97%
4 Thomas 5.70%   9 Morgan 2.63%
5 Evans 5.46%   10 Griffiths 2.58%
Surnames which are only occasionally absent
1 Owen 2.08%   7 Richards 1.26%
2 Edwards 1.97%   8 Lloyd 1.19%
3 Rees 1.83%   9 Phillips 1.18%
4 James 1.51%   10 Parry 1.08%
5 Price 1.31%   11 Powell 0.73%
6 Morris 1.26%        
Surnames with a strong regional presence
1 Jenkins 1.48%   9 Bowen 0.45%
2 David 0.99%   10 Humphreys 0.45%
3 Harris 0.87%   11 Ellis 0.44%
4 John 0.86%   12 Pugh 0.39%
5 Pritchard 0.68%   13 Llewellyn 0.37%
6 Howells 0.62%   14 Hopkins 0.32%
7 Watkins 0.57%   15 Bevan 0.30%
8 Rowlands 0.56%        
Low incidence surnames with strong local presence
1 Rogers 0.29%   13 Harry 0.15%
2 George 0.28%   14 Brown 0.14%
3 Francis 0.27%   15 Prothero 0.12%
4 Vaughan 0.27%   16 Herbert 0.09%
5 Daniel 0.25%   17 Allen 0.08%
6 Matthews 0.24%   18 Bennett 0.08%
7 Stephens 0.23%   19 Havard 0.07%
8 Smith 0.21%   20 Arthur 0.06%
9 Prosser 0.20%   21 Breese 0.05%
10 Edmunds 0.18%   22 Ashton 0.02%
11 Beynon 0.17%   23 Austin 0.02%
12 Foulkes 0.16%        

Note the extremely low incidence of 'Smith' compared with 150 years later.

This information is © John & Sheila Rowlands, 1996 and is reproduced here with their kind permission.
The table is derived from data on pp 43-44 of their The Surnames of Wales (FFHS, 1996)

 

Scotland

(nb. most of the following is paraphrased from the introduction to 'Personal Names in Scotland' Edinburgh:GRO, 1991)

There have been five surveys to date, conducted by the Registrar General Scotland, into Personal Names in Scotland. The introduction to the current 1991 survey, outlines the historical background.

Notes:

 

Main findings of Surveys:-

The 1858 report commented on the low proportion of different surnames in Scotland compared with England. Scotland had 15.2 persons for every surname; England 8.4 persons to every surname. Part of this was assumed to be due to the Clan system of surnames. The report commented on ".....a striking peculiarity of the inhabitants of Scotland that, both among the Celtic race in the Highlands and the Lowland races on the border, it was the custom for all to assume as their surname the name held by the head of a family, either because they were actually his descendants, or because they were his vassals and property". But the 15.2 figure will be too high, as the 1858 survey combined different spellings of similar surnames into one generic name -"Mac", "Mc" and "M" were all treated as being "Mac".

The 1935 survey similarly combined forms, and found 11,976 surnames (in actuality there would have been 14,666 without combining).

The 1990 report discovered 19,108 surnames, resulting in a rate of 10.3 persons per surname. This 'increase' is not just due to the changing methodology, but also to the decline of clan naming, and also in-migration. The immigration, began in 1820 and reached its peak in the 1840's due to the demand for railway labourers. The 1858 survey commented "in addition to to bringing over about 1,000 surnames which are common to Scotland and Ireland, they have added to the Scottish surnames nearly a thousand which till that period were peculiar to Ireland". Nonetheless, the 1858 survey concluded that 32 out of the top 50 names were deemed to both have originated in, and to be peculiar to Scotland. The remainder being equally common to England. None of the top 50, in 1858, was typically Irish. By 1935, the leading Irish name in the list was Kelly (at 47), with Docherty, Murphy and Gallacher in the next 50. By 1958, McLauglin and Boyle had been added to this list.

{Irish names in Scotland in 1881 -a possible area of research?}

A current list of the current leading 100 surnames in Scotland can be found at:-

Scotland's GRO

The following table lists the top 50 surnames in Scotland, as ranked in the 5 previous surveys

Rank Name Occurrences Rank in 1976 Rank in 1958 Rank in 1935 Rank in 1858
1 Smith 2,562 1 1 1 1
2 Brown 1,876 2 2 3 3
3 Wilson 1,654 3 5 4 8
4 Stewart 1,535 7 6 8 6
5 Thomson 1,518 5 4 5 5
6 Campbell 1,456 4 7 7 7
7 Robertson 1,443 6 8 6 4
8 Anderson 1,414 8 9 9 9
9 Scott 1,097 9 13 11 12
10 MacDonald 1,051 10 3 2 2
11 Murray 1,019 12 12 14 19
12 Reid 995 11 14 13 15
13 Taylor 963 14 18 22 26
14 Clark 903 13 15 16 22
15 Young 834 19 21 25 23
16 Ross 829 15 22 18 16
17 Watson 815 17 25 23 28
18 Morrison 812 18 26 27 31
19 Mitchell 808 16 24 20 27
20 Walker 799 26 23 28 30
21 Paterson 777 22 17 17 17
22 Fraser 726 21 28 24 18
23 Kerr 722 35 35 37 41
24 Miller 703 20 11 12 14
25 Duncan 694 34 33 33 34
26 Hamilton 693 28 34 34 35
27 Cameron 692 30 31 30 21
28 Gray 685 27 30 29 33
29 Johnston 685 31 10 10 13
30 Graham 679 33 32 35 39
31 Davidson 674 25 37 36 32
32 McDonald 670 23 - - -
33 Henderson 666 24 29 32 24
34 Martin 664 36 40 44 45
35 Grant 648 39 44 42 36
36 Bell 623 37 45 41 43
37 Hunter 618 32 36 43 37
38 Ferguson 610 29 38 31 29
39 Kelly 607 40 42 47 -
40 Simpson 595 38 39 40 44
41 Allan 561 41 43 38 40
42 Black 561 43 46 45 46
43 Mclean 556 46 - - -
44 Macleod 544 44 27 26 25
45 Mackenzie 543 42 16 15 11
46 Wallace 507 49 47 52 -
47 Mackay 506 45 19 19 10
48 Marshall 502 48 49 56 -
49 Gibson 496 50 65 50 50
50 Russell 473 47 48 49 -

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Modern British Surname Studies
Last revised: December 18, 2003.