5 Most Common Last Names on Each Continent (Except Antarctica) (2024)

What's in a name? Well, quite a lot, actually. The most common last names are more than just labels.

They carry a history, tell a story and — sometimes — even reveal secrets about the past. From the bustling streets of Beijing to the quiet corners of rural Ireland, the most common surnames can offer a fascinating glimpse into a culture's heritage, migrations, and transformations over time.

Let's dive into the world of last names and explore the etymology and history behind some of the most widespread surnames on each continent. Here, we take a look at the most common surnames on each populated continent, according to genealogy website Forebears.

Contents

1. 5 Most Common Last Names in Africa
2. 5 Most Common Last Names in Asia
3. 5 Most Common Last Names in Europe
4. 5 Most Common Last Names in North America
5. 5 Most Common Last Names in Oceania
6. 5 Most Common Last Names in South America
7. Where Do Last Names Come From?
8. The Most Common Last Name on Earth

In Africa, the most common last name is Mohamed, with 7.5 million people carrying this name. But coming in fifth place is Mohammed (4.9 million). No. 17 is Muhammed (1.8 million) and No. 74 is Mahamat (829,000), so some variety of this surname is held by some 15 million folks.

Many African surnames reflect the widespread colonialism that occurred on this continent, and one major group of colonizers was Muslim.

Wang is the most popular surname in the world, which means it's also No. 1 in Asia. Li comes in as a close second, though, with 105 million people having that surname. Due to how populous China is, many of these common Asian surnames names are, well, Chinese.

Kim, the Korean surname meaning "gold," is very popular in both North and South Korea, as are Lee and Park. Devi is the most common family name in India. Nguyen is the Vietnamese surname most often noted by their internal census bureau.

In Europe, the top surname is Garcia, a name held by 1.7 million folks and is the most popular last name in Spain. Garcia is believed to be originally Basque for "bear."

Müller (a German occupational surname similar to the English version, Miller) is the most popular surname in many German-speaking countries. It's also the most popular occupational last name in Spain (as Molina) and in Ukraine (as Melnik), possibly because these countries grow a lot of grain and the surname refers to one who milled grain.

If you take a trip across from mainland Europe to the UK and Ireland, there are plenty of other common last names worth considering. Murphy is the number one Irish surname (meaning a "sea-warrior") while the most popular Scottish surname is Smith and the most common Welsh surname is Jones.

Many people are surprised that the most common surnames in North America are all of Spanish origin. That's because, while the U.S. and Canada are part of this continent, so are Mexico and all of the nations and territories in Central America and the Caribbean — nations and territories that were largely colonized by the Spanish.

If you look solely at Canada and the U.S., Smith comes out on top as the most common last name in both nations. In the U.S., Smith is followed by Johnson, Williams, Brown and Jones — all names that can be traced to the English, Scottish and Welsh, aka the country's early European colonizers.

Smith is also tops in England and refers to someone who is a skilled craftsman (like a blacksmith).

Oceania encompasses all the islands in the Pacific Ocean between Asia and North America, including the continent of Australia. But some 30 million of Oceania's 43 million residents live in Australia and New Zealand, which were colonized by the English.

In this part of the world, many tribal peoples had no tradition of using surnames. Instead of adopting (or being forced to adopt) their colonizers' surnames, as occurred elsewhere, they developed a tradition of taking surnames based on the first names given to their ancestors by their conquerors.

You may be expecting more Hispanic surnames here since so many people in South America speak Spanish. But the continent's largest country, Brazil, is home to roughly half of the continent's population. And Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese, so Portuguese surnames reign.

Interestingly, Ferreira means "blacksmith" while da Silva is a person from the woodlands.

Scholars say cultures that use surnames generally employed them to describe one of five characteristics.

Colonization as an Exception

Yet not every last name fits into one of these categories.

Enslaved people were often forced to take the surnames of their subjugators, which is why many Black people in the U.S. have European surnames such as Williams, Davis or Jackson. In fact, when you look at the most common surnames around the globe, you'll see they reflect the world's most dominant colonizers: the English, Spanish, Chinese and Muslims.

Marriage

In English-speaking cultures, it's long been the custom for women to change their maiden name to their husband's surname upon marriage. That practice has been on the decline since the 19th-century feminist movements, though.

Multiple Surnames for Individual People

And in Mexico, people are given two surnames: the father's surname, followed by the mother's (for example, Catalina González Martínez.) When addressing someone, though, the protocol is to use only the father's surname, so Catalina would be called Catalina González.

Assimilation

Then there's the issue of migration. When people migrate to another country or culture, they may alter their surname to better match that of their new homeland.

Take 20th-century immigrants to the United States: Many Anglicized their surnames to better assimilate into U.S. culture, or simplified them because their surnames were difficult for Americans to spell or pronounce. So a Polish surname such as Ziolkowski, for example, might have been shortened to Zill.

Other times, illiterate immigrants didn't realize a clerk, census worker or other official had misspelled their surname. Thus, a Joseph Heyer may have unwittingly become Joseph Hire.

There's no doubt about which surname is the most popular in the world: Wang. More than 106 million people have the surname Wang, a Mandarin term for "prince" or "king."

It's not too surprising that many of the top surnames are Chinese, as China has one of the world's largest populations. As of 2022, it was home to 1.45 billion people, or 18.5 percent of the world's total.

Why Wang?

The reason Wang tops all other Chinese last names may be traced to the Xin dynasty, which began in 9 C.E. and was headed by Emperor Wang Mang.

Mang and his Xin dynasty took away power from the Liu family, who were successors of the Han dynasty, so many royal families adopted this surname to protect their lives and wealth. From there, the name proliferated throughout the centuries.