Is Your Last Name One of the 25 Most Common Last Names in Boise?

How often do you run into someone in the Treasure Valley who shares your last name, but may not be related to you? Depending on what your last name is, it may happen a lot! 

You’re familiar with websites like Ancestry and 23andMe which were created to help you learn more about yourself by helping you discover leaves and branches on your family tree.

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You may have even heard of Family Tree Now, a creepy website masquerading itself as the “Best free genealogy site in the world.” In reality, it’s showing people every address you’ve ever lived at, your phone number, your e-mail address, a list of everyone you’re related to and their personal information. 

But have you ever heard of Forebears? The genealogy website organizes a library of names from around the world geographically and tells you how common your surname is in certain countries, states, counties and cities. They’ve created the directory through an extensive collection of birth/death records from geographic regions and other public records. 

For fun, this author popped her maiden name into the website. It's an uncommon last name that pretty much every substitute teacher or track and field official mispronounced. Based on Forebears records, there were only 38 people with that last name in the United States. Those records were updated before both my sister and I got married and changed our last names, so now there are even fewer.

Curious where your last name stacks up against in Boise? We ran the search to find the 25 most common last names in the area, did a little research into the origin of each last name (because who doesn't love a little history lesson) and here's what we found out!