No doubt, you've heard about ancestry.com and the many services they offer to research your family background and history.  Now, they've compiled the top surnames across the country.

In their blog post, ancestry.com lays out the top surnames in every state across the country, and the results have some interesting patterns.

Across most of the United States, the last name Smith shows up as one of the most common.  Other top names include Johnson, Miller, Jones, Williams, and Anderson.  Here in Idaho, we fit that pattern with Smith, Johnson, and Anderson as our most common.

Our neighboring states share our same names for the most part, with Oregon and Wyoming adding Miller in place of Anderson, and Nevada Garcia.

The biggest regional differences are replacing switching Anderson for Brown in the Northwest and East Cost respectively, and the introduction of a broader variety of names in the Southwest where larger Latino populations introduce Garcia, Hernandez, Martinez, and Chavez.

Hawaii's three top surnames don't show up in any other states.  Those are Lee, Wong, and Kim, and only Massachusetts offered Sullivan as a top name.

One of the other cool things on the ancestry.com blog is a tool to search your own last name to find out more about it's meaning and origin.

The site also offers a 14-day free trial to sample some of their expanded services.

 

 

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