Free Republic

Have you traced your family tree? The origin of some of the most popular last names can reveal a lot about a family’s history. Some surnames say a lot about a family’s history without any further explanation — consider Schwarzenegger, Obama, or even Boyardee. But even common last names can hold a lot of significance and provide a glimpse into someone’s heritage. Smith — the most common last name in the United States — is shared by more than 2 million Americans, yet it holds an etymological clue to understanding how those people might connect to their ancestors. Let’s look...

Well, this is a real head-scratcher — not least because if you want a list of the first and last names of Americans, you'd better have either a lot of time and money or work for the NSA. Unfortunately, I don’t fit either description, so I’m going to try to piece together two separate databases — one for first names and one for surnames. But as I’ll explain, those data sets can’t be stitched together so easily. If they could, we’d be able to say that “John Smith” is the third most common full name in America, but in reality...