How unique is surnames in your home country?

[Deleted]

Schmidt, Schneider, Müller, hard to not know at least one person with that surname in germany.

[Kathandira]

Schmidt, Schneider, Müller, hard to not know at least one person with that surname in germany.

My step father was a Schneider.

[Deleted]

Svensson is probably the most common in Sweden, followed by other names that ends with Son, like Eriksson and so forth. I have no idea about finnish surnames, know that mine wouldn't be able to be traced back to my family in Finland at least, but here in Sweden it can be. Like maybe max 5 people alive who have it here, cousins and so on have another one.

[yeto]

0.00003% have my lastname in my country

[lonely zergling]

There are only ~500 people with that lastname in my country.

[Exception]

Yeah, I remember reading from somewhere that Korea has very few surnames in general.
Edit: found this chart. Lee is the green one. That is indeed quite impressive...


Here in Qatar your surname is derived from the tribe you belong to. As Qatar is a tribal country, the society is arranged according to tribal affiliations, which usually impacts stuff like who you will marry, where you will live, and where you will work. These things are quite important here. I belong to the al-Kuwari, which is quite a big and well-known tribe. But there is quite a bit of variety so I wouldn't be able to call out the most common surname/tribe. If I had to pick it would actually perhaps be the ruling al-Thanis, they are quite a sizeable tribe.

[luc54]

Most common Finnish surnames: Korhonen, Virtanen and Mäkinen. http://verkkopalvelu.vrk.fi/Nimipalvelu/default.asp?L=1
I have no idea what the first one is supposed to mean, the 2nd one refers to stream (virta) and 3rd one means a hill (Mäki). Lot of the names here end with -nen as does mine. That being said my own surname is rare as there's only around 100 people alive with it.

[Tnfstc]

Mines quite common in Wales and somewhere common in the rest of the U.K. but in the U.S. (where I live) it's pretty rare as it translated two ways and the other form is one of the more common last names that everyone assumes my name is and tries to bring up historical evidence of why it's really pronounced that way instead of how I pronounce it. The truth: Americans don't understand that a word said with a heavy welsh accent isn't spelt or pronounced the way they perceive it.

[Twinkelle]

Pretty rare. Not heard of anyone else with it. Doesn't mean it's not there and I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

[Independent voter]

Chaputnik?

In the US we have people from all over so surnames can be very unique, but they might the most common surname in Latvia, etc.

There's a guy around here with the surname "Crow Flies High".

[Bodom]

43 Norwegians and about 250 people in the world has my surname. The most common Norwegian surname is Johansen.

[Bender]

About 20-30 people worldwide (some of them live abroad) with my surname, all of them are my relatives.

[luc54]

Yeah, I remember reading from somewhere that Korea has very few surnames in general.
Edit: found this chart. Lee is the green one. That is indeed quite impressive...


Here in Qatar your surname is derived from the tribe you belong to. As Qatar is a tribal country, the society is arranged according to tribal affiliations, which usually impacts stuff like who you will marry, where you will live, and where you will work. These things are quite important here. I belong to the al-Kuwari, which is quite a big and well-known tribe. But there is quite a bit of variety so I wouldn't be able to call out the most common surname/tribe. If I had to pick it would actually perhaps be the ruling al-Thanis, they are quite a sizeable tribe.

Lee is also spelling of the chinese name 李 Li or Lee. And there's what 100 million people with that name in China. So basically it's both Korean and Chinese name. It's pretty damn hard to have unique name in such a huge pool. But hey that has it's own convinences.

[cFortyfive]

Old german/prussian surname I'd guess around 70 people have the same name here.

[Kontinuum]

~165 people in my country. The most popular is Nowak with 220217. But that's data from early 90s.

[Emageht Tsoluoy]

My surname is unique enough that anyone you meet with my surname is either directly related, or married into my surname.

[Dsonsion]

Mine is a very common surname in Spain and other countries of South America, but in Colombia it is so rare that people never, and I mean never, know how to write it well the first time.

[Deleted]

Mine is a very common surname in Spain and other countries of South America, but in Colombia it is so rare that people never, and I mean never, know how to write it well the first time.

I know that feel. They switch either the E and H or the T and H in it with eachother and often just write one A in mine instead of the 2 that are there. :l

[Baracuda]

0,004% of the Swedish population has my surname.

0,0000078 here :3

[Dsonsion]

I know that feel. They switch either the E and H or the T and H in it with eachother and often just write one A in mine instead of the 2 that are there. :l

In my case it gets even more annoying, because spanish is written the way you pronounce it, plainly and without much of a variety of similar sounds, and yet people add vowels and other letters.