The 100 Most Common Last Names in the United States

The most common last names in America are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones. Together, the 100 surnames below are shared by 51,089,493 people — about one in six U.S. residents — while the remaining population is spread across more than 162,254 different family names. The ranking comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's surname count, the only official source for how many people share a last name in the United States. Click any name for its origin, meaning and full history.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census (counts, rank, per-100,000 rate), compared with the 2000 Census surname file. Origin is SurnameRoot's classification from linguistic roots and the Census self-reported ethnicity mix for each name.

The most common American last names by origin

Read down the list and two things stand out. First, the top of the ranking is still dominated by names that arrived with English-speaking settlers: 62 of the 100 are English or Anglo-Welsh in origin, and the first five — Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones — are all occupational or patronymic names from the British Isles. Second, the ranking is no longer an English list. 26 of the 100 are Spanish-language surnames, and 3 are Asian names that were far outside the top 100 a generation ago.

English and Welsh names

Smith (a metalworker), Taylor, Baker, Cook, Turner, Cooper, Parker and Wright are all trades. Johnson, Williams, Davis, Thompson, Roberts, Phillips and Peterson are patronymics (“son of John”). Brown, White, Green, Gray, Young and Long describe appearance. Hill, Wood, Brooks and Ford describe where a family lived. These name types are the backbone of the American top 100.

Spanish and Portuguese names

6th-ranked Garcia, with 1,166,120 people, is the highest-ranked surname that is not from the British Isles, and it sits above Miller, Davis and Wilson. The Spanish-language group in the top 100 includes Garcia, Rodriguez, Martinez, Hernandez, Lopez, Gonzalez, Perez, Sanchez, Ramirez, Torres, Flores, Rivera and more. Nearly all of them are patronymics ending in -ez (“son of”) or place and nature names such as Rivera, Flores and Torres.

Scottish, Irish and Celtic names

23 names carry Welsh, Scottish or Irish roots, among them Williams, Jones, Davis, Thomas, Lewis, Campbell, Roberts, Evans, Collins, Stewart, Morris, Murphy. Williams, Jones, Davis, Evans, Morgan and Price are Welsh patronymics; Campbell, Stewart, Scott and Ross are Scottish; Murphy, Kelly and Collins are the highest-ranked Irish names.

Asian names

The Asian surnames now inside the top 100 are Nguyen (#38), Kim (#77), Patel (#95). Lee ranks higher still, but it is a shared name: roughly four in ten American Lees are of Asian descent and most of the rest trace it to England.

Names most associated with Black Americans

No surname in the top 100 is exclusively African American, but several are carried by Black families at a rate far above the national share of the population. The highest proportions in the top 100 are Jackson (53%), Williams (48%), Robinson (45%), Harris (42%), James (39%), Thomas (39%). The most distinctively African American surname in the country, Washington, ranks #145 overall.

What changed between the 2000 and 2010 Census

The ranking is remarkably stable at the top: the first five names did not move at all, and Smith has been #1 in every count the Census Bureau has published. The movement is in the middle and bottom of the list, where 9 names entered the top 100 for the first time in 2010 — every one of them Spanish-language or Asian — and pushed the same number of English names out.

New in the top 100

• Patel — #172 in 2000 → #95 in 2010
• Jimenez — #147 in 2000 → #100 in 2010
• Mendoza — #134 in 2000 → #88 in 2010
• Castillo — #135 in 2000 → #93 in 2010
• Ruiz — #129 in 2000 → #89 in 2010
• Alvarez — #132 in 2000 → #92 in 2010
• Ramos — #112 in 2000 → #76 in 2010
• Chavez — #118 in 2000 → #83 in 2010
• Kim — #109 in 2000 → #77 in 2010

Biggest climbers already inside the list

• Gutierrez — #96 → #67 (+29)
• Morales — #90 → #63 (+27)
• Ortiz — #94 → #68 (+26)
• Cruz — #82 → #57 (+25)
• Reyes — #81 → #60 (+21)
• Nguyen — #57 → #38 (+19)
• Diaz — #73 → #55 (+18)
• Gomez — #68 → #51 (+17)

Biggest declines

• Hall — #30 → #45 (-15)
• Foster — #87 → #99 (-12)
• Myers — #85 → #96 (-11)
• Long — #86 → #97 (-11)
• Wood — #75 → #84 (-9)
• Ross — #89 → #98 (-9)
• Peterson — #63 → #71 (-8)
• Reed — #65 → #73 (-8)

Dropped out of the top 100

• Bell — #67 in 2000, now #106
• Powell — #91 in 2000, now #101
• Sullivan — #92 in 2000, now #105
• Russell — #93 in 2000, now #104
• Jenkins — #95 in 2000, now #102
• Perry — #97 in 2000, now #103
• Butler — #98 in 2000, now #108
• Barnes — #99 in 2000, now #110
• Fisher — #100 in 2000, now #112

These names did not shrink; most gained people in absolute numbers. They fell because the population as a whole grew faster and more of that growth carried Hispanic and Asian surnames.

Most common last names by state

The national list hides big regional differences. Smith leads most states, but the mix underneath shifts with each state's population: Spanish-language names climb toward the top in the Southwest and Florida, Scandinavian names such as Anderson, Nelson and Peterson rank higher across the Upper Midwest, and Asian names appear far earlier in California, Hawaii and the New York metro. SurnameRoot estimates the top last names for each state from the Census ethnicity mix.

How this ranking is built

The U.S. Census Bureau publishes a file of every surname reported by at least 100 people in the decennial Census, with the total count, the rank, the rate per 100,000 residents and the self-reported race and Hispanic origin of the people who carry it. This page uses the 2010 file for the ranking and the 2000 file for the change column. The Census Bureau has not yet released a surname file for the 2020 Census, so 2010 remains the most recent official ranking of American last names. Counts on individual surname pages are drawn from the same file.

Two things the table does not do: it does not combine spellings (Johnson and Johnston are counted separately, as the Census counts them), and it does not adjust for people who did not respond to the Census.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most common last name in the United States?

Smith is the most common last name in the U.S. The 2010 Census counted 2,442,977 people named Smith, which is roughly 1 in every 121 Americans. Johnson, Williams, Brown and Jones complete the top five.

What is the most common Hispanic last name in America?

Garcia, ranked #6 overall, is the most common Spanish-language last name in the United States, followed by Rodriguez (#9), Martinez (#10) and Hernandez (#11). 26 of the 100 most common American last names are of Spanish or Portuguese origin.

What is the most common Asian last name in the U.S.?

Nguyen (#38) is the highest-ranked Asian surname in the United States, followed by Kim (#77) and Patel (#95). Lee (#21) is shared by families of English, Chinese and Korean origin, so it ranks even higher but is not a purely Asian name.

How many Americans have a top-100 last name?

About 51,089,493 people, or 17.3% of the U.S. population, share one of the 100 most common last names. The other 82.7% are spread across more than 162,254 different surnames.

Which last names are growing fastest?

Between the 2000 and 2010 Census, the biggest gains inside the top 100 came from Spanish-language and Asian names. Patel jumped from #172 to #95, Jimenez from #147 to #100, and Mendoza from #134 to #88.

Why isn't Washington on this list?

Washington is the most distinctively African American surname in the country (88% of people named Washington are Black), but with 177,386 people it ranks #145 overall, outside the top 100.

Where does this data come from?

All counts come from the U.S. Census Bureau's surname file, Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census, compared with the equivalent 2000 Census file. The Census Bureau has not yet published a surname file for the 2020 Census, so the 2010 ranking is the most recent official list.

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