In 1790, the top nine surnames in the U.S. were Smith, Brown, Davis, Jones, Johnson, Clark, Williams, Miller, and Wilson.
These surnames represented about four percent of the total white population at the enumeration of the first federal census.1 Smith still reigned supreme as the most common American surname, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 count.
From there, though, it’s changed in 220 years. Brown—dropping by two positions to number 4—has been replaced by Johnson, which rose from number 5. Williams came up by four points to number 3, but Jones dropped by one point. At number 6, Garcia—the first “new” surname on the list—usurped Clark, which has dropped to number 27. Miller, now at number 7, has moved up by one point. Davis dropped down five points to number 8, while Rodriquez, the second “new” surname, replaces Wilson at number 9 which has dropped to 14. About 6.3 million surnames were recorded in the 2010 census,2 compared to 15,403 in 1790.
See American Surnames in 1790.
- U.S. Bureau of the Census, A Century of Population Growth: From the First Census of the United States to 1790—1900 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909), p. 115.
- “How Common is Your Last Name?” NewsDay, online (https://projects.newsday.com/databases/long-island/census-last-names/ : accessed 6 January 2020).